Black Gold consists of three oil drums each raised six inches above the ground, each of which has a single color light, red, white or blue. The barrels house speakers playing recordings of “Pump Jacks”, the large pumping machines used to extract oil from the wells. The top of each barrel had a shallow reservoir of oil to present the illusion of a full barrel of oil, which also in turn references the illusion of oil being of an endless supply.
Black Gold is presented to reference the state of the world we currently live in, and the imperialistic drive of the United States and the oil trade.
As a child growing up in southern New Mexico I spent a lot of time around Pump Jacks as the Oil Field is the primary area of employment for that region. As we would pass an Oil Refinery we would complain about the smell and my grandfather would always say, “That is the smell of money”.
