Consuming presence

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Caroline Vains was one of nine artists invited to participate in THISNESS; a group exhibition that explored the idea of 'haecceity' (Latin for thisness) and the virtues of the work through the material and immaterial. The exhibition attempted to experiment with the audience's relationship to interior and challenge the perception of the material world. Vains's contribution drew on Warhol's repetition paintings in order to provoke a comparative reading between and visceral encounter with the 'thisness' of shop retailers and their commodity worlds. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Consuming Presence' is a series of ten photographs taken in five boutique shops in Berlin and Lisbon. The photographs are mounted as a matrix of pairs with each pair showing two views of a single shop interior. One view features the shop retailer framed by their shop interior. It is a portrait shot. The other view excludes the retailer and frames only the shop. Taken together each pair is an investigation into the capacity of the human figure to emanate a concentrated 'live' presence or 'thisness' when surrounded by the myriad competing auras of, what Marx called, commodity fetishes. What causes the figure of the retailer to stand out from their commodified ground? Do their display environments cause them to become commodity fetishes themselves? Do the direct gazes of the portraits provoke visceral encounters in the viewer that transcend commodification? In those images that exclude the retailer, do the suggestions of other bodies (reflections, mannequins etc.) become figural surrogates for the concentrated presence of the retailer? RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: BUS Projects is a prestigous Artist Run Initiative, funded by the Victorian State Government, through Arts Victoria. Exhibition proposal are selected by an independent curatorial board headed by Nella Themelios and Drew Pettifer. A catalogue documenting and contextualising the works in the exhibition was also produced.