Tiff Oben

Thomas Goddard and Tiff Oben perform the chavs in white nylon sportswear and cheap gold jewellery. They have appeared unannounced at art events in South Wales and most recently unannounced at the Venice biennale for the Chav Grand Tour. Neither would ordinarily dress this way during their everyday existence but for the purpose of the project they temporarily unhinge the stereotypes they ordinarily inhabit creating an intervention into their senses of self. This intervention not only alters their appearance, but also their gestures and interactions with others: they conspicuously hung-out in in-the-way spaces, hallways, doorways, on stairs, in front of artworks. They offer no reasoning to enquiries as to their presence, so obviously out of place and unfamiliar in art environments such as the biennale. They do not actively become aggressive, surly, negative but it is often taken for granted that they are there to cause trouble. Their presence activates inbuilt suspicions of difference and plays with the idea of assumed aggression in a wary audience.