Deb Mostert Artist Statement
‘Sacredness and Banality – A collection’
Humble objects of both play and service sit in gentle, quirky arrangements…exploring banality and sacredness, triviality and holiness. These artless, worthless, anonymous relics of childhood and household are simply there to hint at shifting memory, collection, service and sacredness.
The search for personal objects which can become metaphors for these ideas continues. I have found objects from my own childhood collections and my family and others cast away plastic toys and old metal cars and miniatures. Recently a strange desire to paint incredibly, gloriously kitschy snow domes and plastic pineapples has also crept in!
I’m interested in ‘Rhopography’ (from rhopos meaning trivial, small wares, trifles) which describes the humble things instead of the grand.
These paintings show emptied objects…lost objects, forgotten and passed over objects…yet they also show the wear of service, of play, they hold memory, they startle us with recognition. They are both sacred and banal.
Deb Mostert September 2007