This week in trash news:
Photo credit: Tom Nycz/The Journal News
A tipster alerted me to this charming story of trash balls in the Times. This timely piece reminds me of my promise to bring you a series of posts on trash artists. Mark your calendars, the trashtistic fun begins next week!
Today I spent part of the afternoon paging through binders of slides in the back of a Soho gallery, conducting background research for the next everydaytrash special event. Following on the success of Literary Trash—a week of interviews with trash authors that has blossomed into a semi-regular feature—will be Artistic Trash, a week of interviews with trash artists. You’re going to love it. Or hate it. Either way, I hope you let me know in the comments because you slackers really need to get more interactive.
And speaking of trash people, fellow garblogger Ruby Re-Usable has been busy installing a collection of her own. Using an industrial roll of plastic wrap discarded by a local food co-op, the artist began by wrapping friends in plastic, added some tape and ended up with the lifelike and transluscent figures on view this month all over Olympia, Washington. A documentary of the installation project debuts locally tomorrow (I’ll let you know if I hear of other screenings).
What I love about this project is that, just like the flip-flop whale in Kenya, it takes something cast aside and turns it into something fun and beautiful for the community to enjoy. These whimsical plastic wrap people seem absolutely interactive—and without any bells, whistles, motors or gadgets.
They remind me of another favorite installation—the Stoker Project’s tape babies.
Keith of The Temas Blog mentioned this world-roaming trash art show in a comment last week, but for those of you who may have missed it, check out these people sculptures made from recycled materials and photos of said trash armies installed around the world.
Romans seem to love The Trash People. The spectacle opened on the first day of Spring and has already received one million visitors. Yahoo! has a slide show.
Kenyan fishermen and the World Society for the Protection of Animals are building a giant whale sculpture out of the endless stream of discarded flip flops that get caught up in fishing nets. The partners hope the end product—pieced together with the help of local women who have long been recycling flip flops into local handicrafts to sell back to tourists—will serve as a massive pro-environment, anti-whaling symbol.
For updates and to sign a petition of your solidarity, check out Whale Watch.
Via the power combo of an everydaytrash tipster and the BBC online.
Hands down the best part about having a trash blog is that my weekly web searches lead me to other people out there doing similarly bizarre work on trash-related matters. And sometimes, when I’m very lucky, other trashies trolling the Internet stumble accross this site and contact me. Such was the case recently when I received a very nice note from the (not so) amateur photographer behind the wonderful new art garblog, Gutter Envy. So far the artist has posted three galleries of photos, all of wet trash encountered on the streets of New York.
This week in trash news:
A friendly tipster alerted me to the fact that NYC’s trash artist in residence, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, has an upcoming show. She has at least one piece, an installation created from a garbage truck, on display February 23-26 at the 2007 Armory Show.
According to Amy Zimmer’s article in yesterday’s Metro:
The booth will feature elements of her past works, such as “Touch Sanitation,” where from 1977 to 1980 she followed routes in all five boroughs to shake the hand of each sanitation worker and say, “Thank you for keeping New York alive.” At P.S.1 in 1987, she created “Re-entry,” a 90-foot sculpture made from 11 tons of recyclables. “I wanted to make it like building blocks so you could imagine [these objects] really could have another use,” she said. Her “Ceremonial Arch Honoring Service Workers in the New Economy,” which was made with 12,000 dirty gloves from sanitation and other workers, graced the World Financial Center in 1988.
Ukeles past work includes pieces highlighted here on the Avant-Guardian’s online ‘textlet’ on “Cycle-Logical Art” and these photos of Fresh Kills, the massive land fill that will one day form the base of a massive park.
The latest issue of the hard-cover Canadian art magazine, Alphabet City, covers our very favorite topic. I came accross it at the Whitney last weekend and have been peering at the chapters one Subway ride at a time every since. What I like best about this book is how diverse it is, covering everything from really wonky articles to a woman’s poems about her sanitation worker uncle. It starts off with beautiful close-up photos of dust bunnies and covers everything from a collection of found paper airplanes to photos of industrial spaces to forgotten people in Mexico. I’ll try to hook up an interview with the editor.
I found out about surfer, artist, blogger and author Andrew Hughes and his book of photographs depicting beach debris from Monday’s featured author, Elizabeth Royte. While we haven’t met in person, I know Andy to be a generous and forgiving guy. He responded to my pesky inquiries about his work right away, supplied beautiful photographs to go along with his answers, and even forgave me for accidentally calling him Australian (he’s ENGLISH).
everydaytrash: I read that you’re a surfer. Is that how you discovered this unconventional subject?
Andrew Hughes: I started learning to surf whilst at art college in Cardiff (Wales) 1989 – ish. One particular beach in Wales (Sker Bay) is just few miles from a very large industrialized zone, huge chemical works…it was on this beach that after coming out of the sea I noticed a sharp/metallic object in the palm of my hand, under the skin. It hurt and when I returned home I pulled it out with tweezers. At this point I thought about all the pollution we were actually immersing our bodies into. The sea water washes in your ears, your mouth etc.
It concerned me, my work (i.e. art) began to consider this as subject matter. At this time I became involved with a group call surfers against sewage – almost 16 years ago. My work up until this point was based upon photographs of friends who were surfers.
everydaytrah: What was the first thing washed up on the beach that you photographed?
Hughes: This pic was one of the first I did, 1990 – The image was blown up to 4 foot and then covered in oil and Tar I found on the beach. Then re-photographed.
everydaytrash: Does your work deal with the metaphors of things thrown away and forgotten, or are you purely interested in aesthetics?
Hughes: I think there is a duality, a conflict…in one sense they are all powerful metaphors, in a way I hope that they refer to our own mortality.
They feel somehow lost, often the object has been in close human contact. They had relationships with humans and other objects.
The objects once had a function – then discarded at will with no sense of purpose, to wash back and forth on the coastal fringe.
I think the book gently introduces the viewer to an insight or idea, I hope that they’ll consider and ponder the consequences of our mass consumerism, perhaps some may take some future action, its like “planting a seed.”
The purpose of these images is to enhance and explore how ‘i’ ‘we’ feel when presented with stuff,waste etc. I hope that the experience of art/photography in this manner may encourage individuals to reflect and make links with their own life experiences.
everdaytrash: And similarly, do you consider your work political?
Hughes: In the obvious sense no, but as a subject very much yes, I have been involved with various pressure groups etc. and whilst they are absolutely vital, I have steered away from my images being used in a direct didactic manner.
Picasso’s Geurnica as an example is much more potent and powerful as a work of art than as political statement (even if it is inherent in the work itself). And of course one of the writers/contributors is very much a political activist, have you read Josh Karliners ‘Coporate Planet’ ? Very good.
everydaytrash: How consciously are you drawing attention to consumerism and environmental issues?
Hughes: I hope that by giving presence to the stuff in the images, by almost investing a life in the object people can make the intellectual jump and consider this in the objects they live with, the stuff they use and consume and in turn the object discarded and its effect of other forms of life, on land, in the seas etc.
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Dominant Wave Theory is available to visit and/or purchase at MoMA and, for those who don’t live in New York City, online.
Next up on the Literary Trash lineup is an interview with Robert Sullivan, the alacrious and tersely cogent author of Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants.
I discovered the lovely North American Sea Glass Association in this article today. It’s a collective of beachcombers selling sea glass jewelry and bulk sea glass all over the world. In fact, the West Coast Sea Glass Association even buys sea glass. Check out all the pretty colors on their handy rarity chart.
Check it: The California Integrated Waste Management Board keeps an online clip art gallery of waste prevention images.
Check it, Stay Free! magazine is doing with broken iPods what I want to do with used bridesmaid dresses.
I forgot to tell you that on my way to Amersterdam (leg one of a long journey to Malawi), I was sitting next to a member of the Ugandan parliament who represents a northern district. She had been in New York trying to raise awareness at the UN about the violent crisis in her region, which she claimed was worse than Darfur. I raised my wrist to show her that I was wearing a couple Bead for Life bracelets. It turns out, she knows the group and is one of their biggest supporters. She lifted her chin to show me she had on one of their necklaces. This little encounter has inspired me to do several things, one of which is host a bead party.
everydaytrash 