Helen Victoria Walsh
Apr 6, 20231 min
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/world-goes-pop/artist-biography/martha-rosler
In this video, Rosler mimics the television cooking demonstrations popularised in the 1960s by US cook and author Julia Child. She stands in a kitchen wearing an apron and holding a rolling pin. Moving through the alphabet from A to Z, Rosler assigns a letter to each tool surrounding her. Rosler then expresses rage and frustration over women’s domestic role. She said of this work, ’I was concerned with something like the notion of “language speaking the subject,” and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity.’
Gallery label, November 2022
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rosler-semiotics-of-the-kitchen-h00018
"The Garage Sale, which has also been held at the Generali Foundation, Vienna (1999); the Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (1999); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004); and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2005), implicates visitors in face-to-face transactions within a secondary, informal cash economy—just like garage sales held outside a museum setting. As a traveling project, the Garage Sale accumulates elements from each succeeding event, ranging from components of the first project, such as the slide show and audio track, to “merchandise” from previous iterations and photographs of people holding up objects that form part of the installation.
Rosler invited the public to donate items to the *Meta-Monumental Garage Sale*—clothes, books, records, toys, bric-a-brac, costume jewelry, art works, odd items, mementos, and whatever items, large or small, that strike one’s fancy. The donation period has expired. For more information, visit the Garage Sale website."
https://www.moma.org/calendar/performance/1261