{"id":127,"date":"2025-06-26T18:38:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T18:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/?p=127"},"modified":"2025-07-09T08:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T08:58:06","slug":"poolside-gossip-x-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/poolside-gossip-x-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"Poolside Gossip: X-Ray (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldwork"],"acf":{"artwork_title":"Poolside Gossip: X-Ray","medium":"Digital Montage","year":2025,"dimensions":"tbc","artwork_statement":"<strong>Conceptual Overview<\/strong>\r\nThis piece, Poolside Gossip: X-Ray, doesn\u2019t just contrast with Poolside Gossip \u2014 it exposes what lies beneath it. Aarons\u2019 image sold a fantasy: the perfect pool, the perfect people, the perfect life. It became part of the visual language that shaped how we see success and happiness \u2014 affluent, aspirational, beautifully lit.\r\n\r\nBut in this work, I\u2019m not offering a parody or a reenactment. I\u2019m offering a kind of visual x-ray. Like the protagonist in They Live, this image invites us to put on the metaphorical glasses \u2014 to see what was always there, beneath the gloss.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_129\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"800\"]<img class=\"wp-image-129\" src=\"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/they-live-300x197.png\" alt=\"They Live\" width=\"800\" height=\"526\" \/> They Live, John Carpenter (1088)[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe scene is similar \u2014 a pool, palm trees, figures in repose \u2014 but the illusion is gone. The water is stagnant, the setting overgrown, the people replaced with damaged fibreglass mannequins propped on crutches. There is no laughter, no conversation, no vitality. These figures were never alive. They\u2019re not failed humans \u2014 they\u2019re the bones of the ideal.\r\n\r\nThis isn\u2019t the aftermath of aspiration. It\u2019s the moment we realise the aspiration was a fiction to begin with. The glamour was a script \u2014 and we\u2019ve exited the stage. The mannequins don\u2019t mourn the loss of the ideal. They reveal its emptiness.\r\n\r\n<strong>Material and Visual Strategy<\/strong>\r\nThis work was constructed as a digital photomontage using composited imagery. The pool is real and located in an abandoned or neglected setting, selected for its clear visual contrast with Aarons\u2019 iconic luxury pools.\r\n\r\nThe mannequins are fibreglass forms retrieved from retail, posed with the aid of hospital crutches\u2014objects associated with injury and dependence. This pairing introduces both irony and pathos. While Aarons\u2019 figures recline in ease, mine must lean for support.\r\nThe hyperreal style is intentional: the image sits between fiction and documentation, visually seductive but conceptually uneasy. The composition references the staging of Aarons\u2019 original photographs, echoing but deforming their aesthetic logic.\r\nSymbolic elements include:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Mannequins \u2013 Idealised forms, now lifeless and damaged<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Crutches \u2013 Devices of support and failure, disrupting grace<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Derelict pool \u2013 A monument to the failure of the leisure ideal<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Reflection<\/strong>\r\nThis piece helped me clarify a critical throughline in my practice: not just a critique of consumerism, but a mourning of what it promised.\r\n\r\nI see this work not as a parody of Slim Aarons, but as a dialogue with him. His world depicted an aspirational fantasy that shaped generations. My work explores what happens when that fantasy ends\u2014when the products are gone, and the identities they sold us begin to dissolve.\r\n\r\nThe mannequins here don\u2019t just represent broken ideals\u2014they are figures attempting to perform roles that have collapsed. They are beautiful, blank, and ghostly. In that sense, Poolside Gossip: X-Ray becomes both a visual homage and a speculative obituary.\r\n\r\nThis piece also reinforces for me the potential of digital montage as a way to build speculative fictions grounded in critical observation. It pushes me to explore further how humour, unease, and symbolism can intersect in the visual staging of ideology.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_130\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"800\"]<img class=\"wp-image-130\" src=\"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/slim-aarons-poolside-gossip-300x201.png\" alt=\"Poolside Gossip, Slim Aarons (1970)\" width=\"800\" height=\"536\" \/> Poolside Gossip, Slim Aarons (1970)[\/caption]","feature_image":136,"themes":["Digital Collage","Mannequins"],"custom_slug":"","":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosys.art\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}