ABOVE: 2007 ART CAR BOOT FAIR COMMISSION BY SARAH BAKER. Photo James Galloway.
ABOUT THE 2007 COMMISSION
Sarah Baker deals with notions of cultural and class status as conveyed through adornments, symbols, logos and other signifiers which may go along with or perhaps against a person’s immediate appearance. In the third of her Vauxhall Art Car commissions Sarah Baker presents herself to us as a kind of modern day Pocahontas, a feathered Princess astride a souped-up, blinged-up red convertible, flanked by twin protectors and back-grounded with a logo originally drawn from powerful mythological sources – the Griffin, a hybrid creature with the body of a lion, the head and wings of an eagle.
The overall image is a melange of ‘sweet sixteen’ Americana, hip-hop bling, native American, a British car marque and cross-cultural references that hint both at modern-day celebrity and age-old mythology…and the idea of artist as impersonator-come-conduit-come-interpreter of our scrambled cultural references. Come and buy her golden feather earrings, hang a dream-catcher rear view mirror ornament in your car and ask yourself: Who the hell am I?
