This artwork is a development of the themes postulated by René Magritte in his painting "The Treachery Of Images"1. The painting itself was famously the subject of a book by the philosopher Michel Foucault2.
"Foucault argues that within Modernity, people are falsely positioned within an established system of seeing that links reality with visual representation. Magritte's painting of a pipe, combined with the painted words "This is not a pipe," calls into question visual representation itself, inasmuch as what is painted on canvas is not actually a pipe, but a depiction of a pipe."3
Art is in the realm of illusion and one of the tenants of its function is 'suspension of disbelief' this enables the viewer to believe what he sees as 'real' not a depiction of what is real. Magritte's painting throws a pebble into this illusionary mirage and destroys not only the image itself but also the bond of trust between viewer and artist. The tables are turned in Marshall's artwork. Here the starting point is based firmly in the real world, ubiquitous Ikea chinaware. The text on the porcelain reminds us of the children's game where BLUE and RED and YELLOW are written and we are asked to call out the colour of each word. Marshall's questioning is deeper though, and forces us to reassess what objects are. Objects that exist in the "real" world cannot be taken for granted, in contemporary life perhaps nothing is what it seems, even Ikea pottery is "art". Oh, the treachery of objects!
1"La trahison des images"1928-1929
2 "This Is Not a Pipe" (trans. J. Harkness pub. University of California Press 1983)
3 Abstract by Brent Whitmore, University of Minnesota.