Centennial Rust

Artist: Christine McDonald
Curator: Danielle Degon

AUTOMAT Collective | Philadelphia, PA. March 2023.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Demolition Derby and General Motors’ invention of aesthetic retooling, Centennial Rust considers the lifespan of vehicles through the manipulated processes by which they are produced, preserved, and pressured into entropy. Multimedia artist Christine McDonald situates herself and her vehicle amidst the complicated relationship between production and destruction while investigating the origin of and destiny for obsolete vehicles. She depends on her vehicle as a tool for understanding the psychological and material conditions of its existence, and draws specific inspiration from moments of its decay– the forming rust and dripping residue which slowly reveal themselves.  

Connecting the tactics of the automobile industry to the sports and sites which arise out of its overproduction– specifically the Automobile Daredevil Demolition Derby, Aerobatics, and the Tucson, Arizona Airplane Boneyard– Christine McDonald interprets her own temporality. She uses archive, video, sculpture, installation, and pigment created from disintegrated car body to explore the symbiotic relationship between production and destruction.