Currently Reading: Vitamin 3-D: New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation. Phaidon (eds.). 2009. Phaidon, London.
This survey of contemporary sculpture conducted in 2009 spotlights 119 prominent cross-generational artists from 27 countries, introduced by Anne Ellegood. The criteria for inclusion to this survey was that from the 500 nominated by ‘significant’ critics, curators art historians and creative writers, they have made a ‘significant’ contribution to sculpture and installtion in the past years.
Ellegood starts with Rosalind Krauss’ major essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1978) and looks at the transition from modern to postmodern in the medium of sculpture. A major notion she identifies is medium specificity to material specificity; from talking abut sculpture to talking about its constituent parts.
This shift had already occurred when I was at art school (as an undergraduate 2003-2006) where artworks were described as comprised of the material components as opposed to merely ‘sculpture’, ‘painting’ or ‘print’. Indeed these categories were merely academic – quite literally as the fine art course was divided into these sections at the time. The argument of what constituted sculpture was no longer of concern; anything could be sculpture. It was this basis which we build our practices upon. From this material specificity, I have come to rubbish-specificity.
Ellegood goes onto to cite (p.007) Samuel Beckett saying that it is the artist’s task to find a form that accommodates the mess; finding order in chaos, although she contrasts this notion in the footnote with Theodor Adorno’s notion that “The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.” Minima Moralia. Adorno. T.W., 1978. Verso, London.
As Ellegood weaves together some fundamental concerns in the ‘expanded sculptural field’ of the day, she brings into the fore the notion of abundance (p.008); the embrace of disorder and precariousness which she notes as a move away from minimalism and towards construction and assemblage based practices. She says this is a “consistent acknowledgement and mirroring of how the excesses of visual, physical and sensory input increasingly characterizes contemporary life.” She derives the recurring approach for contemporary sculpture to employ everyday materials and found objects not historically associated with sculpture. A perceived alchemical life of materials and disposition towards recycling brings us neatly to the use of rubbish in contemporary practice and Ellegood quotes Douglas Heubler: “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting. I do not wish to add any more.” – a notion shared by several ‘rubbish artists’ I have interviewed. In this context, Ellegood also mentions Even Holloway’s use of discarded batteries and Jedediah Caeser’s use of studio detritus cast in blocks of resin. Other artists Ellegood cites in reference to rubbish include Mike Nelson who “salvages his materials from the enromous debris in the city” for A psychic vacuum (2007). She also mentios David Wilson’s Museum for Jurassic Technology which sounds worthy of further research. (both p.010)
In a wrap up of her key themes, Ellegood points out “We no longer find a roomful of dirt […] to be a dubious sculptural gesture. (p.012)
continued…
