If You Can't Take the Heat Get Out of the Kitchen

If You Can't Take the Heat Get Out of the Kitchen 1991 2 shelves with 14 kitchen canisters, metallic and enamel paint, adhesive lettering each canister 300 x 200 mms

Two shelves contain seven kitchen canisters bearing phrases derived from current critical writing about contemporary art. If You Can't Take the Heat... brings contradiction to the categorisation of modernist and postmodernist values, presenting phrases whose opposed critical positions are frequently elided or ignored within the same piece of writing. In appearance and function the work parodies conceptualist and '70s-feminist concerns which demonstrated that cultural significance is the result of contextual and critical accumulations rather than inherent properties. It further anticipates the privileging of text as the record of history.