AdEx0009: Fintan Dawson |
Museum of Contemporary Rubbish has teamed up with Advertising Exhibitions on a new rubbish collection.
Alice has written a brief inviting artists to contribute to a special collection by uploading images of their rubbish related to their practices to the AdEx Gallery.
ARTISTS'
RUBBISH BRIEF
Rubbish
is the rejected, redundant, broken, misprinted, off-cut, used up and
consumed. We all produce rubbish from biological matter (see Piero
Manzoni's Artist's
Shit
(1961)) and daily waste like coffee cups, train tickets and
newspapers, to household items like furniture and electrical goods
that are eventually updated, replaced with a newer, shinier model or
break beyond repair. Everything has a limited lifespan, including our
own bodies which will too become waste scattered as ashes or buried
in the ground one day.
As
artists, we often use and re-use materials that other people may
regard as rubbish; the found object and the Duchampian readymade are
part of many contemporary practices. Some artists work directly with
rubbish which is the subject of my current research project (see
http://contemporaryrubbish.wordpress.com/
) and many artists hoard particular materials that have potential to
be used in the future.
Artists'
rubbish is a specific kind of waste that provides a window into the
creative process of each practice. Offcuts are the negatives of
production that offer up scraps of detail of the processes involved
and misprints and failed experiments provide intrigue into the
artist's intention and what would pass the high standards we set
ourselves. An empty cup of coffee drank over a chat with another
artist might symbolise a breakthrough moment or an empty pack of
paracetamol might symbolise too much indulgence at all those
previews. Each redundant and rejected object has a narrative about
its significance to practice and how it became to be classified as
rubbish.
Our
rubbish says a lot about us. Criminal investigators, unethical
journalists and identity thieves root through people's bins to find
evidence of activity and valuable information. Rubbish can also be
given new value by others. Cases have been recorded of thefts from
artists' studio bins of the likes of Robert Rauschenberg where the
contents have been put up for sale without permission and, in 2010,
Michael Landy produced Art Bin at South London Gallery where
he invited the public to dispose of works of art as a “monument to
creative failure.”
Andy
Warhol famously never threw anything away that would later become the
archives of the Andy Warhol Museum
in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Working materials,
source materials, a personal collection of thousands of collectibles
and ephemera, 608 Time Capsules (dated collections of
material from the artist's daily life), the full run of Interview
magazine, approximately 4,000 audiotapes scripts, diaries, and
correspondence form these archives.
Artists'
own detritus has been the subject of practices such as Claire Healy
and Sean Cordeiro's
Deceased Estate (2004),
Tracey Emin's My Bed
(1998), Richard Dupont's
Assisted Head
(2011), Amanda Ross-Ho's Restraining
Order (2005), David
MacRaild's Need Not Want
Not (2005) (see
DETRITUS),
David Shapiro's Consumed
(2003), Tom Friedman's Untitled
(Eraser Shavings) (1990)
(see LEFTOVERS),
Marc Quinn's Self (Blood
Head) (2006), Hans
Schaubus's Remains of the
Day (2011) (see REMAINS),
as well my own project for HOARD
(2012)
collecting every
item of rubbish from my art practice during 2012 that would have
otherwise been thrown away. These artworks deal specifically with
artists' shit (detritus/leftovers/remains) – as opposed to other
people's shit; providing an autobiographical dimension to the
materiality of waste.
As an
artist/curator/writer/researcher in artists' uses of rubbish,
interested in all of the above and more, I am inviting contributions
to a new Artists' Rubbish project for Advertising Exhibitions.
Read the full brief here and contribute to the gallery: http://advertisingexhibitions.co.uk/brief.html
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