posted on 2023-05-26, 13:14authored byMacDonald, A
Anne MacDonald acknowledges the history of the ‘vanitas’ genre in art and the association of the photograph as memento-mori for her contemporary explorations of the relationship between still life, transience and mortality. Her photographic installations focus on the symbolic potential for objects as metaphors for emotional states; as expressive of anxieties for our current age and the ephemerality and mutability of existence. Although distilled and minimalist her works invite a complex and layered reading. In recent works the detritus of the social ritual of an apparently joyous child’s birthday banquet is at another level an elegiac indicator of time’s inexorable passing and the brevity of childhood. All that glitters, an egg-shaped field of crumpled gold confetti medallions, mines connotations of luxe and indulgence implicit in the vogue for faux metallic party-ware decorations – contradictory when applied to the cheap, disposable and ‘temporary’ nature of the product - and a potent commentary for our time on the transience of personal and political excess and greed.