| It is tempting to read Jeremy Drummond’s recent work as a straightforward critique of the suburban way of life. After all, suburbia is an easy target—the cookie cutter houses, the false sense of security, the failed promise of domestic bliss. Scholars, artists and urban planners have been bemoaning the woes of exurban growth for the past 50 years; it’s a comfortable stance, an accepted view. But in his latest exhibition “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere,” Jeremy Drummond takes a closer look—close enough to find difference in sameness, diversity amid the conformity. |  |
Everybody Knows this is Nowhere – Cindy Stockton Moore
Portions of the text are reprinted from the upcoming catalog Jeremy Drummond: Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, produced by Drake University for the Anderson Gallery, Des Moines, Iowa.
It is tempting to read Jeremy Drummond’s recent work as a straightforward critique of the suburban way of life. After all, suburbia is an easy target—the cookie cutter houses, the false sense of security, the failed promise of domestic bliss. Scholars, artists and urban planners have been bemoaning the woes of exurban growth for the past 50 years; it’s a comfortable stance, an accepted view. But in his latest exhibition “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere,” Jeremy Drummond takes a closer look—close enough to find difference in sameness, diversity amid the conformity. His investigation into the love-hate relationship we have with our environments moves beyond physical geography to question shared ideas of identity and community.
Chances are, the name of the street you grew up on or the road where your best friend lived is as easy to remember as that of your first love. In the “Street Sign Series,” Jeremy Drummond forces us to look again at that seemingly ubiquitous text. Divorced from the personal connotations and physical surroundings, the absurdity of the street names becomes apparent. Photographs taken from actual intersections create playful puns in this carefully orchestrated grouping. Viewers ponder the strange chimera formed at the crossing of Canada Goose and Dolphin Song or the implied promise of Fidelity Avenue and Honeymoon Drive.
Equally important is the relationship between the romanticism of the open road and the implied domesticity of these pieces. It is telling that the pastel hues are culled entirely from the Martha Stewart Collection. Their names (Scented Notepaper, Cat’s Whiskers, Violet Powder) evoke Stewart’s particular brand of saccharine nostalgia. In its simplicity, Jeremy Drummond’s work asks a complex question; whose sweet dreams are these anyway? In a sense, the naming process is most aptly summarized by his documentation of the intersection of Culture and Whitewash.
On a bureaucratic level, the determination of street names (or odonymns) is a fairly straightforward process. Today, most new odonymns are proposed by the controlling powers of a particular subdivision, namely the developers. The names they choose often reflect the clientele they hope to attract. Monikers that are meant to denote class, like traditional English nomenclature, are used to provide a tone of decorum—to add a sense of history to a community with no relative past. In the same spirit of irony, urban planners note developers’ inclination to name a street after the natural environment they destroyed. This is not a new phenomenon, in fact Walter Benjamin brings up similar instances in his article The Streets of Paris in which he speaks of “long vanished” landmarks that still “haunt” neighborhoods where they may or may not have existed. This brings up the idea of location as a generalized text and site for discourse, a reoccurring theme in Drummond’s work.
A more tangible form of semiotics, each sign possesses an enticing materiality. The photographs, printed as die-cut automobile decals, are mounted on custom-painted steel—the slick finish of the auto-body paint has the allure of a newly waxed car. The promise of prosperity and happiness reflects in the shiny surface of these ironic billboards for the American Way. By visually referencing the automobile, the “Street Sign Series” reminds the viewer of the symbiotic relationship between the suburbs and the advent of driving culture.
With their circuitous routes, prominent driveways and omnipresent cul-de-sacs, the suburbs were designed around cars. Not only do we witness this visually, but the majority of our collective experience in the planned environments takes place within a car. In this way, speed not only dictates the aesthetics of the suburbs, it also defines the way that we view them. The “Drive By” portion of the exhibition is a series of 74 video stills that investigate the complexities of this rapid perception. Taken from a moving vehicle, Drummond’s images blur the line between rural and “developed” communities. They are apt metaphors for the quickly changing visage of the North American landscape, but the raking shots also imply the speed in which society moves through environments and the cursory modes of “seeing” often employed while doing so.
Through his use of video, Jeremy Drummond is visually referencing an equally pervasive component of suburban life—the television. By equating the windshield of the car with the screen of the television, the artist parallels the rapidly moving images we absorb. He is also calling to question our role in those images. The driver of a car has some agency—surely it is their choice which route they will ultimately take. But as the landscape between places becomes more and more similar, what does that choice really entail?
The transitioning landscape is documented in the photographic series, “Intersections”—in which we see an environment in flux. Desolate construction sites and man-made environments depict the paradoxical phases of development: the subjugation of natural habitat and the reinsertion of a more perfected version of nature. Here we witness the replacement of the landscape for “landscaping.” The dichotomy between the yearning for nature, and the overwhelming desire to control that nature, echoes other facets of the suburb.
The manufactured environments show a human instinct to make life foolproof by forcing reality to conform to our needs. Although the vistas they provide are far from enticing, the images already show signs of inhabitants. We are reminded that even in this simulated environment real lives are destined to unfold. What is troublesome about the homes is not simply their physical homogeneity, but the realization that their similarities somehow reflect our collective desires.
In the video This Could be Anywhere, This Could be Everywhere, we witness the changing complexion of the contemporary suburb. The piece serves as an intricate visual portrait of the town of Brampton, Ontario—a city located on the outskirts of Toronto that serves as Drummond’s subject throughout the exhibition at the Anderson Gallery. Intertwined with footage of the town itself are 50-second images of its inhabitants, a culturally diverse blend that challenges suburban stereotypes while simultaneously pointing to the new reality of exurban life.
The audio reinserts the parameters in which these lives take place. A woman’s voice reads off names of existing streets while a man’s reads a list of some rejected monikers. The dialog between the two forms a binary rhythm in which the viewer is left to contemplate the nature of the naming process. Again, questions of the authorship of these environments are raised. Weaved together with the visuals of the town, these words seem the arbitrary choices of an unseen narrator, far removed from the reality of the city’s inhabitants. Drummond’s video points to the divide between the projection of the suburb and the experience of living within that environment.
This investigation into the area between perception and reality is at the core of Jeremy Drummond’s work. By presenting us with a subject that we already “know,” the artist is asking us to step beyond the picket fences of our prefabricated positions. Suburbia has long been characterized as either saint or devil, but through the course of this exhibition we see it for what it really is: human…complex, conflicted and flawed. In short, Jeremy Drummond has done the unthinkable—he has rendered the monotony of the suburbs unpredictable.
