Yellow has been a prevalent colour from the very outset of my residency. One of the most poignant ‘rubbish conversations’ and objects I’ve photographed to date is this paint tin of ‘Oro Antico’ [Antique Gold] which is a mustard colour. This paint tin symbolises the broken relationship of the previous owner and their desire to start a fresh and move on in their life.
There’s a close relationship between rubbish and antiques. Some people throw away things of value all the time whether this is sentimental, material or antique value. Antiques Roadshow will tell you how much your rubbish in the attic may be worth, and Lars Tharp once valued my rubbish as ‘worth a painted fence‘ referencing Mark Twain.
Antiques: n. A collectable object such as a piece of furniture or work of art that has a high value because of its age and quality.
Sometimes even a broken antique is valuable.
I’ve been aware of the Japanese ‘golden repair’ technique Kintsugi for a while, and whilst I’m not going to emulate that, I thought it would be interesting to play with this notion of highlighting repairs or breakages beyond repair with “Oro Antico”. As a poor imitation of ‘old gold’ or a fake old gold, a suggestion of it or commercial homage – Oro Antico is the colour I want to use as a hi vis highlighter. So I’ve colour matched the paint from the Recycling Centre at another recycling centre: Seagulls Paint in Leeds which sells recycled paint.
It was a fascinating process for an artist that doesn’t paint! The shop itself was amazing with layers upon layers of splattered paint.
Buckets for lampshades.
The staff there were really helpful and curious what it was for: “Is it for a feature wall?” So I explained the work and considered that the Oro Antico from the failed relationship was probably indeed a feature wall. I thought this was a really interesting term: Feature Wall (aka accent wall): the wall that is different to stand out akin to kintsugi drawing attention to the repair.
