Commercial Rhetoric Art Project
© Steven McCarthy 2006
Commercial Rhetoric Art Project uses the visual material aimed at domestic markets to create a body of work that recontextualizes it into a social, political and economic statement. By dismantling and re-arranging the commercial messages meant to seduce us as consumers, the project causes viewers to question the rhetoric that attempts to colonize our homes. Strategies of collage, juxtaposition, satire and parody serve to invert the dominant tide of advertising propaganda entering our private spaces.
A series of collages created from junk mail, assemblages of food and product packaging, reconfigured branded apparel, digitally remixed television and radio commercials, web sites and email “spam” – Commercial Rhetoric Art Project uses any uninvited advertising as its fodder. Some of the 250+ artifacts are purely aesthetic, some critique consumer culture, and others hint at an alternative functionality.
