Rubbish

Museum of Contemporary Rubbish is participating in Market Value at A+D Gallery, Chicago. A new range of international merchandise has been made especially featuring items from British, German, Italian and Cuban collections.

Market Value: Examining Wealth and Worth

Curated by Steve Juras

A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Ave, Chicago, Il 6060, USA

February 28 – April 20, 2013

Opening Reception:
February 28, 5-8 pm

Market Value: Examining Wealth and Worth is a multi-faceted investigation of economic, commercial and aesthetic value. Featuring artists from across the country working in a variety of media, this formal and conceptual cross section unpacks the tenuous relationship between value, wealth, and worth in contemporary culture.

Participating artists include Alice Bradshaw, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Kyle Fletcher, Jason Frolichstein and Mike Wilgus, John Hodgins and Steve Moore, Mike Merrill, Chad Person, William Powhida and Jason Polan.

http://www.colum.edu/ADGallery/Calendar.php

Axisweb Curated Prize

As part of my research for the Axisweb Curated Prize, I interview the artists in my selection on their use of rubbish/waste/discards.

Interview with Lousie Winter (part 2)

AB: What processes do you apply to these materials?

LW: Once the collected material has been brought back into the studio I embark on a process of intuitive play. This enables a fluidity that arises as a result of almost not thinking, or, it is a different kind of thinking, one based on the physicality of learning. This intuitive play enables me to uncover more abstract readings of these materials, questioning their status as signifiers and is essential if one is to avoid imposing meaning onto something. It is only after this process that I attempt a kind of post-rationalizing, so, in a sense, there is a kind of distillation that occurs from the outset as I gradually narrow things down in order for them to become more concentrated.

My most recent works have developed beyond the displacement and reassembling of collected material as I attempt to somehow re-animate the materials. The latest pieces such as ‘Rubbish pile and fan’ evidence something that has happened and in effect continues to happen in the context of the gallery. This absurd counter reading of the material is intended to question our relationship with things in the world and, in particular, our mediated relationship with nature and our often futile attempts to harness it for our own devices. It is where this simulation falls down and collapses into parody that I find most fertile.

AB: What context do you show your work in?

LW: For me, first hand experience of the work is essential, so, the optimum viewing space, if there is such a thing, would be the white cube. The reason why experiencing the work first hand is so important is because it is at this point the viewer or audience are confronted by the non-site, and there is an inherent paradox within this, that the viewer is to some extent experiencing something that is ‘unreal’ in a ‘real’ space which could equally be viewed vice versa. It’s an interesting interplay in that one proposition questions the boundaries of the other and that this is somehow made accessible in the present or, as the critic John Haber has said, the non-site creates ‘a rupture in the gallery walls, one in turn predicated on their existence in the first place.’

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

LW: I like to keep a plethora of rubbish and collected material in my studio as kind of permanent collection if you like! I like to have a continuous resource that I can draw from at any time. It’s important to remember that although I might only ever use a handful of these objects to form actual pieces of work, that is not to say that the remaining items won’t be used in the future so there is this amassing of unrealized potential.

Interestingly, this collecting of material also creates a pause or suspension within the existence of the object itself, often interfering in its process of decay through the process of salvaging. At the same time they are also withdrawn from circulation in a similar way to the fact that most pennies are sitting in peoples coin jars and not being exchanged within the currency system. Going back to the idea of rubbish and its relative value, it is interesting that people are now calling for the penny to be scrapped because it is deemed to have outlived its economic usefulness.

Axisweb Curated Prize

As part of my research for the Axisweb Curated Prize, I interview the artists in my selection on their use of rubbish/waste/discards.

Interview with Lousie Winter (part 1)

AB: Why do you work with rubbish/trash/discards?

LW: My interest in collecting rubbish and other discarded material stems from my exploration of the relationship between site and non-site (the site being the actual physical environment from where the material is collected and the non-site being the displaced material which is then placed in a different context). The emerging dialectic, where the constructs of site and non-site enter into a dialogue as to how the position of objects can change, questions the spatial confines of the gallery, our assumptions of reality and the location of stable material within it. For this reason I am continually drawn to rubbish. It is also important that I don’t create objects as such, but work with already existing matter in an attempt to collapse the distance between art and the mundane, exploring the poetic and absurd potential of the everyday.

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

LW: I usually refer to the materials I collect as found objects which relates much more to the process of their acquisition. The term rubbish is relative in the sense that, by its very definition, it is that which is considered worthless, and, based on that assumption, is rejected. The cliché ‘one mans trash is another mans treasure’ seems appropriate here and clichés are, after all, rooted in truths.

At the same time it can be a humorous and disarming way of introducing your work to someone by describing it as rubbish! Do you sell your work? No. Why? Because its rubbish. It’s that kind of deadpan humour that I invoke with the titles of my work which operate purely on the level of description by simply stating what they are.

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

LW: The sites I use are very much non-places. They are usually subject to social and economic estrangement and are consequently marginal and overlooked. This includes abandoned collieries, quarries, derelict buildings and other such sites. I choose these sites for their relative isolation and because material is allowed to gather, in the same way that dust collects in an undisturbed corner of a room.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

LW: When I am at a given site I try to be as open as possible in terms of what I collect. I work on the premise of collecting or photographing anything that is of basic interest to me so potentially nothing is excluded. Having said that, I do find that I am particularly drawn to fragments of things as opposed to things in their entirety, things that are barely distinguishable as what they formerly were or have undergone some kind of transformation or deteriorisation. This quality not only imbues the materials with a rich sense of history but also releases them from their meaning and context thereby allowing for their re-interpretation. It is this propensity for the familiar to become unfamiliar that interests me.

Axisweb Curated Prize

As part of my research for the Axisweb Curated Prize, I interview the artists in my selection on their use of rubbish/waste/discards.

Interview with Maurice Carlin

AB: Why do you work with rubbish/trash/discards?

MC: I collect failed and discarded photocopies left behind at copyshops and publish these in a periodical called The Self Publisher. While the specific context of this material is very narrow in that it only forms a snap shot of those who have needed to use a particular duplicating service on a particular day, the array of material is broad and speaks clearly about a people and a location, about motivation, action and work.

My practice seeks out the peripheral view, exploring things that have often been missed, left or lost. In some cases these are actual objects or materials, in others it is a situation or simply a moment. I find the anonymous histories and unknown back-stories of these situations interesting. Beyond the materials and circumstances themselves, I am often more interested in their provisional and transitory nature, the factors that have created their existence and what this could mean for the present.

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

MC: I don’t really consider that I am working with ‘rubbish’ in the Self Publisher. It may just be a matter of what different words/terms might suggest but I would usually say ‘left’ or ‘discarded’ material. For a few early issues of the magazine, I experimented with other words/terms that could mean the same thing but that might open up the possibilities of potential meaning a little. So I used terms like ‘the leavings’ or ‘collected leftovers’

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

MC: Photocopy shops local to where I am at any given time. I have generally produced the magazine in Manchester/Salford where I am based but have also produced issues while on artist residencies or when visiting, Antwerp, Barcelona, London and Macerata in Italy. I have also produced copies in other circumstances such as the 2009 student protests at Middlesex University Philosophy department. Myself and a group of Islington Mill Art Academy members visited the campus to offer some support to the philosophy students who had occupied their building and were protesting at the proposed closure of the well respected Philosophy course at Middlesex. The students were producing an overwhelming volume of material on the buildings photocopier to get their message out to the world so I offered to catalogue some of it for them in a special edition of ‘Self Publisher’.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

MC: The concept is that the material comes from a copyshop, a place where the (re) copying and distributing of information is taking place. I simply intervene and collect the surplus from this process. I collect everything that has been left behind.

AB: What processes do you apply to/with these materials?

MC: I usually publish everything that I collect. The breadth and dissonance of the subject matter is ‘equalised’ by the action of sequencing the materials together into the pages of a magazine, this combined with the black and white ‘sameness’ generated by the photocopying effect. Pages that have had no previous association start to ‘communicate’ with each other. I try to keep my intervention to a minimum and re-publish the work as I found it. Elements of unavoidable subtle ordering creep into the process, where I place one thing after another that might have some arbitrary connection.

AB: What context do you show your work in? (eg gallery space/public space/internet)

MC: I have shown this work only in galleries, usually in the form of a number of issues displayed to be read or leafed through. Sometimes I have produced a special edition for a particular show as in a show at Banner Repeater in London in 2011 and also as a result of a residency in Antwerp in 2010. I am open to showing it in other contexts but haven’t really had the opportunity as of yet.

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

MC: I keep everything!

Axisweb Curated Prize

As part of my research for the Axisweb Curated Prize, I interview the artists in my selection on their use of rubbish/waste/discards.

Interview with Hilary Jack

AB: Why do you work with rubbish/trash/discards?

HJ: I like old objects sometimes in preference to new. I often wear second hand/ vintage clothes and collect all manner of old objects for my home. I also have three found rescue dogs. As an artists I work with discarded objects and would rarely manufacture or fabricate a new work. Working with objects already available to me in the world is a small anti consumer, activist statement. I believe we discard too many objects that could be repaired or reused. Sometimes I see an object and gives me an idea for a new piece or a whole series of work. I use mainly broken and found objects which reference the concept of built in obsolescence and highlight the way we live our lives today.

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

HJ: In my artists statement I say that I work with broken, abandoned materials.

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

HJ: I collect objects from ebay charity shops and the street. More erecently Ive been working with objects from the natural world, fallen twigs and branches and logs discarded from sustainable and industrialised forests.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

HJ: I’m drawn to objects that have a strong sense of human presence, a single glove, a broken umbrella, a headless china figurine. Im interested in the history and life span of these lost and broken materials. How they came to be produced, how they came to be lost or discarded and their shifting value.

AB: What processes do you apply to/with these materials?

HJ: I use these found objects in small scale sculptures, sculptural installations, public interventions and web based projects which reference the journey these objects have made from, conception through to production, consumption, obsolescence and decay.

AB: What context do you show your work in?

HJ: …. in gallery spaces, in the public domain, outside and on the internet

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

HJ: Some of my work is left to decay in situ, other work is stored for future exhibition. My most recent piece of work “Empty Nest” a giant scale birds nest sited in a 200 year old tree in Tatton Park for the The Tatton Park Biennial of Contemporary Art, has been exhibited for six months and stored, ready to be reconstructed at Compton Verney for their annual programme in March 2013. It will stay there for the rest of its natural life.