100 GOLD BARS - Playful Awards

100 GOLD BARS

In 2014, PANI (the Publicity Association of Northern Ireland), under the leadership of Nuala Meenehan, commissioned me to design their awards. I have a complicated, mildly hostile relationship with awards, so I proposed that the only way I could take on the commission was with my tongue firmly in my cheek, and by doing something deliberately outrageous.

These were awards for an industry that effectively presents accolades to itself — ironic, post-ironic, or somewhere in between. That circularity felt like fertile ground. My condition was simple: I would only make them if they took the form of large, heavy gold bars. Companies often won multiple awards, and I was interested in the idea that success could be physically accumulated — stacked, displayed, and weighed.

The proposal was accepted without hesitation. One hundred gold bars were produced. Equal parts prize, prop, and parody, the works collapse celebration and critique into a single object, converting abstract notions of merit, value, and prestige into something blunt, literal, and heavy.

One remains in my home, repurposed as a doorstop.