Rather than selecting a single lot, I’ve chosen three that are cumulatively less than £5,000. I think this rule-breaking would be entirely approved of by the artists I’ve chosen: Edward and Nancy Kienholz.
First it was Ed, then Ed & Nancy, and now just Nancy (Ed was buried in 1994 inside a vintage Packard coupé, stocked with cigarettes, wine and the ashes of his dead dog Smash). Their co-authorship, so out of line with the 19th century idea of a lone (and usually male) artistic genius, yielded these three wonderfully clunky and ugly multiples, published by Gemini G.E.L. Each piece is assembled from the detritus of Modern existence: televisions, luggage, radios, light-bulbs, plastic knobs, tin cans, useless wires and antennae; each serves as a shrine to the junk that becomes treasure in an apocalyptic future.
These works are somehow both rancid and precious; they make me want to cringe and reach out to touch them at the same time. Their cumbersome forms, rendered void of any functionality, are drizzled in an extra-terrestrial slime-like polyester resin, embalming them as reliquaries of consumption and consumerism.