A term attributed to Hitchcock, the MacGuffin is a cinematic plot device, usually an object, that serves to set and keep the story in motion despite lacking intrinsic importance. Famous examples include the statue from The Maltese Falcon, the glowing suitcase from Kiss Me Deadly, the bottle of Uranium in Notorious, and the letters of transit in Casablanca.

Originally commissioned for the exhibition “Wouldn’t it be Nice” at the Somerset House in London in 2008, The MacGuffin Library proposes the foundations for a library of MacGuffins, produced by first authoring a series of film synopsis’ which are used to inform a collection of sixteen objects, addressing themes stemming from a disparate range of interests and inspirations: Re-enactments, unorthodox fantasies, Borges and Carver short stories, forgeries, urban myths, the defining of high and low brow cinema, alternative histories, and the relationship between media and memory.

The objects are made out of a black polymer resin using a rapid prototype machine. There is an essential, necessary subversion in this approach to production, as an advanced fabrication and manufacturing technology is being juxtaposed with the imaginary through the creation of fictional objects for nonexistent films. Through the industrial process, detailing and materiality, the pieces produced sit in an unnatural space, challenging their status as art objects, being neither sculptures, nor products, nor props, but an amalgamation of all three.

The MacGuffin Library was recently exhibited in the show Nowhere/Now Here at the Laboral Contemporary Art and Industry Center in Asturias, Spain (Oct 9 08– April 19 09), and at the Bat-Yam Center of Contemporary Art in Israel as part of the group show Factory (May 25 – September 26). It is currently being exhibited at the ArtSway Gallery in Hampshire as part of ArtSway Open 09.

In collaboration with Onkar Kular and Keith Jones. Photographs by Sylvain Deleu.


Goebbels’s Teapot



America



The Rosenberg Passports



Bad Engineers



Betacam Tape



Teeth



Spear of Destiny



The Potemkin Steps



Koons Balloon Mould



High Heels



A to G



James Dean