In the strange world where art meets fashion, teeth currently have the curiosity factor. Emma Montague’s jaw bone spectacle arms add a certain je ne sais quoi to plain old sunglasses.
Friction can be found where luxury meets decay and the refined becomes raw. As raw remnants collide with smooth surfaces, hybrid forms take shape within Montague’s collection of handmade eyewear. By subverting status symbols of personal adornment, dualities are left exposed, mirroring our identity.
Sculptor John Rainey has also been inspired by teeth:
Having witnessed the gradual collapse of the distinction between reality/fantasy, fact/fiction, privacy/publicity, my sculptures are survivors of a struggle for supremacy between the virtual and the actual,” he says.
“By subverting status symbols of personal adornment, dualities are left exposed, mirroring our identity.”
I am now ready to forgive the generation of literary critics who loosed a horde of bad pop-music critics on us. The natural children of the New Critics who tried to interpret The Beatles’s lyrics with tools made for Shakespeare were hard to bear. Clearly the offspring of the structuralists are at least as bad.
Which dualities are exposed, though, upper and lower plates?