“Red rover, red rover, let Suitable Brown come over!”

In a queering of the Readymade tradition, Tucker uses paint chips to depict an innocent children’s playground game in progress. Here, Tucker explores what makes us decide which difference is cool and which difference is shunned.

Tucker explains that she has always been enamored with the words on paint chips. Tucker remembers being completely seduced by phrases like: Gorgeous White, Alluring White and Divine White. Red Rover (In Progress) was inspired by the moment when Tucker realised that the Brown chips such as: Suitable Brown, Steady Brown, Fiery Brown and Well-Bred Brown were not having the same seductive effect as the White chips. This realisation then wrenched her back into the past; back to the hot summer days when she was one of the only dark-brown skinned little girls at camp where they played games like Four Square, Hopscotch and Red Rover. Tucker remembers these games as an example of the ultimate popularity game mixed with mob rule; for Tucker they seemed to be ‘a cruel tonic to lubricate our already shaky impulse control.’

In Red Rover (In Progress) Tucker asks the question: “which paint chip would I choose if I had the loudest voice on the playground? Which paint chip would you choose?” Tucker explains that “in our darkest moments, in my darkest moments, I know that my choice would require intervention. Disruption.” And so, Tucker’s paint chip works are a way of reordering what we hath wrought through human nature, systemic sorting and ‘good old fashioned marketing.’