Implications of still life representation of the domestic object

Still life representation is a curious tension between the banal and the vital. The genre of still life has always been considered a minor artistic category, marginalized in critical discourse and rejected by artists in favour of weightier subjects. Though constantly disparaged and/or ignored, the depiction of small, inanimate objects has endured, persisted, and prevailed since ancient history - traceable back to Greco-Roman antiquity and beyond - while other, loftier forms of representation have fallen in and out of favour through the ages. The genre’s historical and continuing vitality and magnitude in the face of mediocrity and discrimination are explored through research of particular artistic examples. Also documented here is the process of the creation of several of my own visual works which were produced specifically in response to this research.