Exhibition text by Jon Pylypchuk / Artist

Step inside, walk this way,  

You and me, babe,  

Hey hey!

The opening line of Def Leppard’s mega-hit “Pour Some Sugar on Me” ignited the loins of a generation. While their glam style wasn’t quite my taste, i liked Iron Maiden I did appreciate that their music inspired women to tease their hair sky-high and wear makeup like Jem.

Just four years later, Nirvana would render hairspray and backcombing obsolete, fundamentally reshaping our collective consciousness. In another four short years, AOL would reach 3 million active users, leading to the eventual manipulation of that consciousness.

Memory is malleable. The anthem elucidates a version of hedonistic abandon, yet my awkward teenage self was a mere benchwarmer to the fun had.

My teenage version gets softened as time passes, the edges less pimply and anxious, the hair maybe longer than photos confirm. Memory problems.

Interestingly, I still remember the line as “you’re one mean babe.” To this day, that’s how I hear it.

My heart evokes nostalgia in muted tones, hesitant to fully embrace the losses and failures of the past. It’s akin to a digital photo where you can erase the mistakes. But what if, in real time, you could embellish those missteps? What if you could personify them, elevate them to a higher level? Imagine shining a light on both the past and the present, representing the world we inhabit alongside one that once held so much promise. They can coexist.

In her work, Eyres does just that. She meticulously crafts analogues for our present and our potent past. Not afraid to make these objects fit into the narrative she chooses. The Amazon smiles we encounter daily, blush as they face the day, a “nice n’ easy” hair dye box an instant time capsule and I can hear “another world” in the background as my mother dyes her sister’s hair in an attempt to slow time. Time blurs and becomes one.

Eyres curates these analogues, they are not objects personal to her. A brief conversation enlightened me to her concept of memory and the relationships cultivated over time. Memory problems as an actual problem like forgetting names and memory problems as memories one would not want to remember.

The plastic mind allows things to be endlessly rewritten until the blur comes into focus.

You’re one mean babe.

That’s how I want to remember it. Eyres allows that function.

We navigate our lives, hoping for the best. Like a soap opera, her work reflects us. Eyres creates thoughtful meditations on our past and brilliant examples of our present.

At some point, the Amazon boxes will evoke nostalgia just like the “nice n’ easy” boxes do now. How we choose to remember them will be filtered and curated in our minds.