Justwait
09-10-2009, 02:11 PM
I saw the work of Dawn Mellor last summer at a Gallery in the east village of NYC. I remember this horrifying feeling of unsettlement as I saw the huge paintings of the characters of the Wizard of Oz in nightmarish situations. She also did a series of famous people demonized. It really makes me think about our society's cultish obsession with celebrities. I thought I'd share some raw thoughts I wrote from my journal at the time of viewing.. and also would like to know what everyone thinks of Dawn and the ideas she brings up.
"We live in this world that celebrities and fictional characters are so fawned over and glorified that we feel they are our friends or apart of our family. We think of these people, like John F. Kennedy, Mother Teresa, Obama and even Dorothy, as untouchable. We are affected by what they do, what they stand for, how they act. We see ourselves in them. They are our idols, the people we want to be. Therefore to see these people in horrific situations it’s not just disturbing, it’s devastating, because it’s almost as if it is our brother or grandmother in these situations. By using these characters, Dawn Mellow isn’t just shocking us with gore, she is making us feel the utmost sympathy for these people, because it’s as if we know them. If she had made up the person to put in the same scenes as Dorothy in her paintings, we wouldn’t care nearly as much as we do now."
"We live in this world that celebrities and fictional characters are so fawned over and glorified that we feel they are our friends or apart of our family. We think of these people, like John F. Kennedy, Mother Teresa, Obama and even Dorothy, as untouchable. We are affected by what they do, what they stand for, how they act. We see ourselves in them. They are our idols, the people we want to be. Therefore to see these people in horrific situations it’s not just disturbing, it’s devastating, because it’s almost as if it is our brother or grandmother in these situations. By using these characters, Dawn Mellow isn’t just shocking us with gore, she is making us feel the utmost sympathy for these people, because it’s as if we know them. If she had made up the person to put in the same scenes as Dorothy in her paintings, we wouldn’t care nearly as much as we do now."