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"Only Boring People Get Bored" was first shown at FERREIRA PROJECTS in Feb/March 2009. This body of work is an existentialist outing via assemblage, games and by-products of boredom. The installation 33 Things To Do Before You Are 10 was shown as the result of his gallery residency as well as forming an integral part of the exhibition. Only Boring People Get Bored is a confident and colour laden show, exploring how boredom can be inspiring and/or important in the production of the work. Existentialist notions of how we govern our lives as free individuals are of interest to Ford, and in particular how we fill our relatively short time in the world.
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Medium pink and yellow scribbles (detail)
In 2007 Ford came across an article in a newspaper which listed 33 things you should do before you're 10 and realised he hadn't done them all. He decided that, since he was soon to be married and really should have grown up by now, he would work his way through the list with his partner Tess. The project takes the form of a weblog, presenting photographs and videos of Ford and Tess completing activities such as collecting frogspawn, baking cakes and hosting a Teddy Bears picnic.
Over a 4-week residency period at FERREIRA PROJECTS, Ford created a room-sized installation filled with photography, handmade objects, looped video footage and leftover debris; a haphazard collection of documentation from the deceptively gruelling 33 things to do before you're 10 project. Some of the 33 things, if lost or damaged previously, were remade for this incarnation of the project, including the home baked cakes which were cut into pieces and handed out at the opening of the exhibition. Parts of the installation such as the potted cress, sandcastle and cake remnants are ephemeral and decay/disintegrate over the duration of the show.
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To situate and understand Ford’s activity within the realm of boredom, it is important to contextualise the meaning of boredom. Boredom could be said to be symptomatic of post-modernity: endless choice and freedom can cause us to fall into a state of numbness and aimlessness where we are not able to ignite our interests. The artist’s (actual or perceived) state of boredom leads him to create art almost as a means of killing time.
In this show, Ford plays games (literally and conceptually) with the viewer and sets himself tasks and challenges to fulfil, to the pleasure or dismay of the audience. From a film of himself playing the game “Guitar Hero”, in which the viewer can only hear the pathetic clicks and twangs produced by the plastic, pseudo guitar; to piecing together ridiculously difficult mono-colour jigsaw puzzles; to completing the annoyingly repetitive game of “Bop It” and turning the results into a hovering, hypnotising beacon of the avant-garde. There is also an assemblage of Rubik’s Cubes and a new series of intensive works created by the raw boredom-relieving act of scribbling.
33 things to do before you're 10 (installed)
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