Artwork Information

This small work by Robert Hood come from a long tradition of collecting found objects and incorporating them into works of art. Hood emphasises the transformative capability of such objects, by attaching a plastic bag to the mouth of pop icon Bruce Springsteen. The plastic waste shapes into a fluid emission from their mouths - either as regurgitated matter or - as the title would indicate - an other-worldly ectoplasm. Jonathan Smart writes in his catalogue on Hood: "This is the big bull market after all, with consumerism characterized as the never-ending search for life improvement. Re-cycling however, is the new mantra, and Hood is good." The bags and pop icons shrink wrapped in plastic indicate waste and transformation through re-contextualisation in the work of art.

Robert Hood has developed a practice which broadly examines youth culture, and in particular the culture of the streets. A collector of ephemera and off-cuts, he is also interested in drawing parallels between the popular culture of today and the forms of high modernism. His most exhibited work to date is a collection of car windows stacked in dual recognition of their industrial waste and beauty. It was originally accompanied by photographs of 'burn outs' - or the tyre marks made by performing amateur stunts in motor vehicles on lonely back roads of Canterbury.