Daniel Eatock

Visible Vehicle Repair

08/01/2018 – 22/03/2018


Visible Vehicle Repair

“So part of this debate is undoubtedly about ‘value’, existing value, past value, and future value. As a simple rule of thumb, I have myself evolved the notion that in dealing with historic buildings we should try hard not to remove any aspect of value, but that it is legitimate to add value.” 

—Peter Burman, ‘A Question of Ethics’

British artist and designer Daniel Eatock, known for astute observations and obsessive collecting, creates works which celebrate the quotidian and mundane, whimsically celebrate the everyday, and question accepted convention.

Focusing on auto repairs where an identical part from another vehicle of the same model, but of a different color, is substituted, Eatock’s photographs focus on a practice in plain sight, on economic and transparent fixes. Recognizing a connection with art conservation—where repairs are meant to be visible rather than camouflaged—as well as with the Japanese art form of kintsugi, where pottery repairs are illuminated rather than hidden, Eatock elevates a thrifty practice to a place where it can be considered and appreciated as an aesthetic choice. Are these repaired vehicles richer, more valuable and better as a result of accident and repair?

 

Billboard framework: Olivier Goethals
Photography: Michiel De Cleene

This billboard is a collaboration between Design museum Gent and 019. It functions as an alternative exhibition platform for (graphic) designers. A leftover from the Museum Of Moving Practice project that happend between the 18th of May and the 17th of September 2017, where 019 temporary occupied a part of the museum. This billboard is a copy of the Billboard Series framework that has been hanging at 019 since September 2015. (A project by artlead, All Things Contemporary Vzw & 019.) Each billboard stays up for two months. The designers are selected by 019.