Mathew Once Told Me Elinor Morgan

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Mathew Once Told Me
Elinor Morgan
...that when he was young he read in the Spice Girls annual that Posh Spice had
peppermint tea for breakfast every morning. After discovering this he began to make
himself tea using mint from the garden, which he realises now was not peppermint.
Now, this might sound ridiculous, but the more I think about the Spice Girls the more
I see links between them and Mathew’s work. And I don’t think this is just because I
recently saw Melanie B’s autobiography in his sitting room… It seems pretty clear to
he’s shown iron-on transfers of smiley faces and cannabis leaves as well as bottles of
WKD Vodka, he’s made playlists for galleries and the title of his exhibition at The Telfer
Gallery, One Touch, is the names of the Sugababes’ debut album. The Spice Girls had a
early teens. Really you could say that they helped to reshape the direction of fashion,
pop and sexual attitudes from the more masculine, indie culture of Brit Pop and re-raised
The Spice Girls broke through as a pop group and brand in 1996 with their debut single
Wannabe and the idea of Girl Power as a their marketing motif. Like all successful brands
they were imitated. I was ten at the time they got really popular. I remember getting the
T-shirt with the picture where they look naked (I read recently that they were actually
wearing body stockings) for my tenth birthday and at that time it became very important
to know which one of the Spice Girls you were. In my group of friends Posh Spice was
pretty much recognised as top dog but because there were too many of us we had to
elaborate on the set form and create additional characters. So I became Posh’s cousin,
or perhaps sister- I can’t remember. A friend I met later confessed that at boarding school
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she cut holes in her pillowcase and painted it in red and blue to emulate Geri Halliwell’s
Union Jack dress.
Like teenagers all over the world who copy and perfect their Nike ‘swoosh’ Mathew
regularly emulates logos that are so ubiquitous that they have become more than or
distinct from their brand. A Burberry wall painting, three-stripe curtains, a Kappa mug; all
take an internationally recognisable logo and abstract it. Like juvenile brand imitations
these works are not good copies- they just use the basic structure of the symbol to
connote something. Some of Mathew’s work mimics merchandise: digitally printed mugs,
mouse mats and t-shirts look like souvenirs that might be available at a gig. The images
on this merch are sometimes his own and sometimes the bare-bones replica logos that
wouldn’t get much kudos in the classroom.
Part of the Spice Girls’ brand was the aggressively sexual woman who knows her body,
shapes her look and shows her pants to the world. Like other celebrities their highly
controlled appeal changed with each appearance: in some videos and images they were
playful, some assertive, some soft. Each time they attempted to be sexy. Their appeal
was unsophisticated though, with set characters or types, easily digestible by their target
audience: adolescent girls and boys.
Much of Mathew’s work is homoerotic. Two videos in particular utilise a rather lusty
gay gaze. The objects of this gaze are men who present themselves as potent sexual
objects. When Passive Aggressive Strategies Fail to Get Results shows a series of slow
clip after clip of home movies of men dancing full on routines in formation, the main move
in which is the jiggling crotch-thrust.
Like the magazine advertisements and the YouTube clips in Mathew’s work the Spice
Girls’ sexual appeal was both elevated and stunted by the unreality of the illusion they
created. Both are almost sensually appealing but too mediated and mass-marketed to
layered with voices and intentions that make its sensuality slippery, ironic.
Recently Mathew has begun to use scents and hand made pots to break the smooth
surface of his work. One work in particular shown in 2012 achieved a sense of intimacy.
The work is a piece of clay that carries the mark of Mathew’s hand. The object has no
function other than to bear the trace of the touch. This work is a sincere gesture that
marks a material associated with the ancient and the organic. Sensual and intimate,
it is the opposite of the Spice Girls’ polished surfaces, their PVC dresses, the surface
distributed around the world. This piece is distinct from works that use footage of young
men displaying their bodies for unknown others to consume.
whole diet plan, which must be where the peppermint tea appeared. This act of playing
out your life in a public way is akin to the more recent phenomenon of the Internet makeup tutorial. Both see people performing their lives in a mediated way, using the most
mundane routines to create a persona that becomes instructional so that others might
adopt the same process to build their own identities.
The Spice Girls may have set many goals for young fans (fame, sex appeal, power) but
the Internet gave people a way of playing out these fantasies with an audience of their
own. Its social media platforms have seen the proliferation of constant updates on what
term which entered the Oxford English Dictionary in August 2013. Mathew’s video You’ll
Get Used To It, commissioned by Oliver Braid, is a parody of the to-camera confessional,
know themselves’ and ‘I don’t know you but I know I love you’. For One Touch Mathew
has sent friends a script and invited them to perform versions of it to camera to create
footage that he can then intercut with found video.
Wannabe was supposedly written in thirty minutes and recorded in under an hour.
Apparently this is partly because bits of the song had been written previously and partly
because it was not written as a total song but in small sections that were sewn together
by producers Stannard and Rowe. Other producers then devised various versions of the
were one part in a process of production that utilised the skills of those around them.
As well as using found objects and footage Mathew outsources some of his work and
works with others to complete things. He sees that it is better to use the skills of others to
get a desired result. Mathew makes some works (ceramic oil burners and ash trays) but
he also enjoys the idea that by refusing to pick up skills and relying on others’ expertise
he jeopardises his work. He talks about blurring professional and social boundaries by
making work that has an element of social reliance.
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Both strategies of producing rely on systems of invisible labour where the artist or singer
hidden work and expertise. This reliance on the skill and labour of others is not a new
phenomenon in music or art but it does raise the question of authorship, an important
motif in Mathew’s practice. The mug, the ashtray and the oil burner that frequently
appear in his work follow the most ubiquitous of designs. The versions of these objects
that Mathew makes are no longer thought of as having an author or designer. They have
become stock articles, the expected version.
Authentic experiences have arguably become harder to come by with the rise of
postmodern culture and the development of the Internet. It is perhaps unsurprising that
people continue to seek out and experience live events in which it is possible to have an
unmediated experience. Around ten years after their initial success the Spice Girls joined
the phenomenon of the Greatest Hits revival, launching a nostalgia tour and greatest hits
album. This toured successfully cashed in on the notion that fans would want to come
together in one space and experience the band again, in the moment, in the arena.
Mathew and I have spoken about the idea of the authentic experience, socially and when
encountering art. He thinks that the screen is not enough: that people want to meet in
person and see works in a physical setting, that they need this face-to-face interaction in
order to consummate or validate the experience. Although much of his work is accessible
online and some of it functions well when encountered in this way, I suppose this is why
he deems it important to continue to make tangible things and to show them in a space in
relation to other objects, in other words, to make shows.
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