• Exhibits
    • 2025 Exhibits
      • Viewpoints 2025
      • Denis Orloff: A Journey through Painted Landscapes
      • Good Works
      • Strength and Resilience
      • Katie Truk: Macro vs Macro
    • 2024 Exhibits
      • Dwelling In Hope
      • Donna Grande: Evolving Origins & Liminal Perceptions
      • Inspired by Family & Community
      • State of the Art 2024
      • Text
      • Viewpoints 2024
      • Yvette Lucas: Second Nature
      • Black and White Imprint
      • Marsha Heller: Impressions from Nature
      • Across The Line
    • 2023 Exhibits
      • The Life and Culture of Modern Day Latinidad
      • Inspired by the Weight of an Object
      • I AM HERE
      • State of the Art 2023
      • Critique Group Showcase 2023
      • ViewPoints 2023
      • Local Materiality
      • Rhythm and Blues
    • 2022 Exhibits
      • On the SURFACE
      • Pages
      • Inspired by George Inness
      • It’s Academic
      • State of the Art 2022
      • Critique Group Showcase
      • ViewPoints 2022
      • Mujeres del 2021
    • 2021 Exhibits
      • Absolute Abstraction
      • Inspired by an Object
      • State of the Art 2021
      • ViewPoints 2021
      • Womyn’s Werq
      • Privilege, Power, and Everyday Life
    • 2020 Exhibitis
      • ViewPoints 2020
      • Inspired by Dance
      • State of the Art 2020
  • Cart
  • Main Website
smi@studiomontclair.org
Studio Montclair Online GalleryStudio Montclair Online Gallery
  • Exhibits
    • 2025 Exhibits
      • Viewpoints 2025
      • Denis Orloff: A Journey through Painted Landscapes
      • Good Works
      • Strength and Resilience
      • Katie Truk: Macro vs Macro
    • 2024 Exhibits
      • Dwelling In Hope
      • Donna Grande: Evolving Origins & Liminal Perceptions
      • Inspired by Family & Community
      • State of the Art 2024
      • Text
      • Viewpoints 2024
      • Yvette Lucas: Second Nature
      • Black and White Imprint
      • Marsha Heller: Impressions from Nature
      • Across The Line
    • 2023 Exhibits
      • The Life and Culture of Modern Day Latinidad
      • Inspired by the Weight of an Object
      • I AM HERE
      • State of the Art 2023
      • Critique Group Showcase 2023
      • ViewPoints 2023
      • Local Materiality
      • Rhythm and Blues
    • 2022 Exhibits
      • On the SURFACE
      • Pages
      • Inspired by George Inness
      • It’s Academic
      • State of the Art 2022
      • Critique Group Showcase
      • ViewPoints 2022
      • Mujeres del 2021
    • 2021 Exhibits
      • Absolute Abstraction
      • Inspired by an Object
      • State of the Art 2021
      • ViewPoints 2021
      • Womyn’s Werq
      • Privilege, Power, and Everyday Life
    • 2020 Exhibitis
      • ViewPoints 2020
      • Inspired by Dance
      • State of the Art 2020
  • Cart
  • Main Website
Becca Lynes: Watch the Silver

Becca Lynes: Watch the Silver

SKU: 2021-00022.

Diamante on jaycloth, troubling the relationships of suspicion between domestic workers and their employers.

I was inspired by the death of Faustina Tay to create this piece, whose inability to leave her abuser was directly economic. However, I am also inviting the outrage we feel in hearing of her mistreatment to consider not only those who suffer abuse as our legal system defines it but those who spend their entire life in the comparably happy service of another.

This particular message comes from my own time in ‘elite household service’, where I was playing with Playmobil figures with the young daughter. One day, playing with both ‘royal’ characters from a castle set and some sort of forest people from a treehouse set, I knocked on the castle door with the latter.

‘You can’t come in, we’re having dinner’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re the cleaner’
(Confused, I wondered if she meant the forest person in my hand or me as I had been five minutes ago, cleaning)
‘Why am I the cleaner?’
‘Because of those clothes’
‘And why can’t I come in?’
‘Because you’ll take the silver!!’

Troubling, these upstairs-downstairs dynamics are crucially important to understanding how class impacts society. Domestic workers who suffer abuse are disproportionately women of colour, who also bear a disproportionate share of global poverty.

To stage the work, I have created a video that displays the work with moving lights, reacting to the shimmer – the brighter the silver glows, the less legible the message becomes. It is set to a sound score inspired by my own service, where the sounds of a piano can be heard alongside sounds of washing up and implicitly spatialized: upstairs, downstairs.

Category: PrivilegePower. Tags: Collage, digital, fiber, Mixed Media, video.
2
Share
  • Description
  • Additional information
  • Reviews (0)

Becca Lynes works with music and moving image. She aims to explore the contemporary digital/economic/social subject, big data, political communication and pink plastic.Lynes’s creative process draws upon her academic experience, collecting cultural and personal sources and bringing them into dialogue as found footage films using creative softwares.Although primarily a sound and moving image artist, she has been creating work recently using diamante on ordinary materials, furthering her interest in ‘slogan’ messaging and on economic inequality.Lynes lives in Tunbridge Wells, UK.
size

59 seconds, 8 x 11 inches

medium

Cloth and diamante, moving image and sound

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “Becca Lynes: Watch the Silver” Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related products

Read more View Details

Leslie Nobler: Ruth S.

PrivilegePower
2
Sold out
READ MORE

331 -Sold

Postcard-sold
0
$35.00
Read more View Details

Heather Stivison: Meeting Expectations

Artist Member
0
Read more View Details

Monica Camin: Uprooted

ViewPoints 2020
4

We want to hear from you!

Send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Send Message
Our Mission

Studio Montclair is an inclusive, nationwide non-profit organization of exhibiting, professional and emerging artists and others interested in the visual arts. The mission of the organization is to promote culture, education, equality, and tolerance through art. Studio Montclair is committed to diversity at every level.

DONATE
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
GALLERY LOCATIONS

LEACH GALLERY
641 Bloomfield Avenue
Montclair, NJ
hours posted on the webite

ACADMEY SQUARE GALLERY
33 Plymouth Street,
Montclair, NJ
hours: Mon-Fri, 7am-7pm; Sat/Sun 7am-4pm

CONTACT INFO
  • Studio Montclair Inc
  • Mailing Address: 127 Bloomfield Ave., Montclair, NJ 07042
  • 862 500-1447
  • smi@studiomontclair.org

Support for Studio Montclair Inc. is provided in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs.

© 2025 Studio Montclair Inc.

  • Exhibits
    • 2025 Exhibits
      • Viewpoints 2025
      • Denis Orloff: A Journey through Painted Landscapes
      • Good Works
      • Strength and Resilience
      • Katie Truk: Macro vs Macro
    • 2024 Exhibits
      • Dwelling In Hope
      • Donna Grande: Evolving Origins & Liminal Perceptions
      • Inspired by Family & Community
      • State of the Art 2024
      • Text
      • Viewpoints 2024
      • Yvette Lucas: Second Nature
      • Black and White Imprint
      • Marsha Heller: Impressions from Nature
      • Across The Line
    • 2023 Exhibits
      • The Life and Culture of Modern Day Latinidad
      • Inspired by the Weight of an Object
      • I AM HERE
      • State of the Art 2023
      • Critique Group Showcase 2023
      • ViewPoints 2023
      • Local Materiality
      • Rhythm and Blues
    • 2022 Exhibits
      • On the SURFACE
      • Pages
      • Inspired by George Inness
      • It’s Academic
      • State of the Art 2022
      • Critique Group Showcase
      • ViewPoints 2022
      • Mujeres del 2021
    • 2021 Exhibits
      • Absolute Abstraction
      • Inspired by an Object
      • State of the Art 2021
      • ViewPoints 2021
      • Womyn’s Werq
      • Privilege, Power, and Everyday Life
    • 2020 Exhibitis
      • ViewPoints 2020
      • Inspired by Dance
      • State of the Art 2020
  • Cart
  • Main Website