EXHIBITIONS    MARILYN SCHNEIDER: Mega Mansion

Marilyn Schneider is interested in the role of the Hollywood house as a site for performativity in Reality Television. By ultilzing the glamourising norms of representation seen in such celebrity reality shows such as MTV's Cribs and Keeping up with the Kardashians, Schneider articles the changing role of the home in Popular Culture. No longer a place for private recluse from the constant surveillance of the public sphere, the domestic has become the performative site of Reality Television, precisely because of its association with what were once the pinnacle values of confidentiality- family, retreat and solitude.

The home was seen as an authentic architectural representation of selfhood precisely because it stood in opposition to the public gaze. Reality television is changing that. The home of the Kadashian's is in actuality a stage, it is place for display where everything from the objects to the occupants is made to seem desirable. The "Reality" that is purported is a script, and enacting day to day life is a performance. This kind of misrepresentation is especially dubious because it consciously and explicitly purports itself as truth.

Using model making materials, Schneider creates a reduced scale hybridisation of a mega mansion. Corresponding to the occupants' excessively ambitious presentations of status and wealth, Schneider's sprawling architectural forms morph into a grotesque aesthetic invasion of space, so that the mega mansion appears more like a mega monster.