'The Dishwasher' by Olivia Gossett Cooper looks at the subtle, yet profound relationship between the thankless everyday tasks done by players in the home, and the tools used to execute these tasks. Cooper works hard to create a gaping hole in a found dishwasher — a thankless task itself, done to a home appliance that itself performs a helpful job that hardly goes appreciated. In the end, we feel for the dishwasher and consider it now useless, handled however the user sees fit for them until the point of unfit to help. If used, it would ultimately create a mess and chaos, the opposite of its original intended job.
In this video, Olivia Gossett Cooper takes a still tin pot and bangs it against the edge of broken marble. Both Cooper and the pot begin as well-kept objects, seemingly, pleasantly complete as they are. Cooper takes into action what inner thoughts and frustrations about domestic cooking go unrevealed. In a blip, we get a glimpse of these thoughts towards the beginning of the video, just as frustrations might slip through while dealing with life at home. As the interaction between the pot and Cooper unfold, a new relationship takes shape between the object and the person. Do we gradually feel for the pot? Left by itself in a bent and contorted shape, is the pot now more accurately expressing itself as well? How does it feel about being used almost daily for the same laborious task?
In this video Olivia Gossett Cooper breaths new life into a deflated plastic bag, filled with a globe. Taking on a new form, Cooper treats the Earth in a bag like a Goldfish prize won by a little girl at a fair. In the metaphor and reality of what's happening, the idea of winning something filled with life is taken for granted. The work asks us to question what else we have won at home, in relationships, and beyond that we do not fully appreciate or recognize for great potential.
I call on my fellow home dwellers to not fear how work about home may be received, but to embrace the absolutely stunning nuance of the existence. Not all of my work is about this perception, but, being a mother, wife, and female artist, yes, of course it runs through my practice. This is not something I shy away from. There are too many with whom it might connect. There is too much charge to ignore.