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Steve Maher
October, 2014
Steve Maher’s work often focuses on the social and political impact of music – especially pop music – which he realizes through a highly diverse visual, relational and multi-media art practice. Most of his works rely on re-interpretations of pre-existing social/cultural artifacts, rituals and behaviors. As Maher notes quite simply and succinctly: “I am interested in the deep dark shadow within the mechanics of triviality.”
Maher’s installation at Love&Money is built around the complex and rather ancient etymology of the word PLEB. Historically in places like Rome the term referred essentially to the general class of laborers who traded their work in exchange for a wage. In more contemporary times PLEB has come to be a common derogatory term, used by higher classes to insultingly refer to those who are perceived as low. Maher employs PLEB in part as a reflection on our contemporary condition and the cyclical conditions we are unwittingly complicit in propagating.