UCS

Dieter Roth is an artist who I have conducted a lot of research on as of late due to his way of display within collecting. I find his work very interesting by how personal his collections are to him.

This piece called Flat Waste was an installation piece where Roth collected every piece of waste material he collected each day under 5mm thick, over the course of a year. This resulted in a vast archive of material showing his personal life for that year in waste matter.

He chose to display all of these folders in archives on shelves, meaning that most of his collection were hidden away. However he only chose a select few to be on display with lamps. Drawing the viewers attention to these ones and attracting less focus on the shelved ones. This provokes curiosity once thought about as to why only some folders are on show, while others are hid from view. There could even be frustration from the viewer as to why they are not on display, meaning the true extent of disgust of this waste is not shown. This really interests me as to why he has chosen to display in this manner and how the manipulation of the collection can alter the viewers interpretation. This is something I would like to explore later on. Does the viewer believe there really is all this waste archived away? This then relies on trust from the viewer in the artist.

I first initially began collecting my train tickets just as a habit throughout the summer as I was travelling backwards and forwards to work. I had no real plans to use these as work, however with the vast collection I was gathering and the researching I was doing for my literature review, the idea of actually using them for work became an option.

I realised I could in fact create work from these as they were quickly becoming a collection. After the summer, back in the studios, I decided to arrange these in what order was natural, not putting in any influence over why I did it. This created a large image of repetitive patterns, colours and shapes, which could be carried on for however many rows I decide, or depending on if I set a time limit from when these tickets were collected. It has a very regimental approach with this systematic ordering, similar to that of Hirst’s. This is an element I would like to push further in my work as I feel it has strong aesthetics when used in display.