Gilded Cage: Josh Juett

Josh Juett’s Gilded Cage features 10 still life paintings of found objects. Juett’s influence from the Dutch Masters is apparent, not only in painstaking technique but also in subject matter, whereby the artist's selection of objects is symbolic of his inner psyche. These still life painting of abandoned paraphernalia find themselves in a melody of precise compositions with unlikely components. The dark void permeates through the canvas to the eye, examining old dolls, dismembered limbs, abandoned childhood toys, and lost objects appearing in the background. The series hones in on the experience of feeling trapped by anxious and unwanted thoughts. Uneasy, uncanny, and somewhat strange at first, these physical replications show how intense the nature of those feelings can be when examined under a close eye. There is something alluring and eye-catching that makes you look twice at Juett's work - it almost doesn't make sense, until it does. Juett’s discovery of self-inquiry leads itself to create its own world manifested by negative, unwelcomed thoughts through something abandoned, lost and then found. 

"GILDED CAGE is my fourth solo show on ideas based around introspective ideology and represents a path of successive shows on the topic. It aims to represent a look into the inner workings of my mind by speaking to my anxieties, insecurities and ruminations. The work sets focus on what exactly it means to be conscious and consumed by anxious or undesirable thoughts. Through a journey of self-inquiry, I am brought me here, to a show where I am to recognise the phenomenon of the self as a product of consciousness all consumed by the appearances within its periphery, and the self being a product of persistent identification with thought. The idea of the gilded cage represents the coupling of the overwhelmingly positive experience of being conscious with the feeling of often being confined within this mind and body, dealing with persistent ruminations which can at times plague our every moment. Much of my work is created to better understand what it means to be conscious and move through the world. It’s an attempt to maintain a healthy relationship between mind and body and generate meaningful experiences that perpetuate a positive inner dialogue by attempting to come to terms with its negative characteristics. " 

- Josh Juett