Waste
In an age of the Anthropocene, an issue that I have been struggling with within my artistic practice is the idea of waste. I am acutely aware that the work I am creating is in response to our impact on this planet and yet I create work that uses a lot of materials and therefore adds to the continuing problem of waste. I bring these objects into being and therefore have a moral responsibility for them. This has caused me to stop and re-evaluate everything that I am doing. It seems hypocritical to use all these resources to create work that in this stage of my artistic career. I’d have difficulty in selling them and have no-where to store them. This would inevitable mean the work would be thrown away, creating more waste!
One way I have approached this issue is to set myself rules in the way in which I work and the materials that I use, creating work that is temporary and decomposes, such as the Artist Andy Goldsworthy. He works only with organic materials that he finds and his work is the arrangement of them. I love the gentle beauty of his pieces but in terms of my own practice I am keen to explore the juxtaposition of the natural vs the human made and I’m not convinced using purely organic materials would allow me to do this.
Another way to deal with issues is to create provocations within the art I make, such as the artist Mark McGowan. His piece ‘The Running Tap’ wasted 8,000,000 litres of water by leaving a tap running in a gallery for one month. This approach is the complete opposite of Andy Goldsworthy and puts the emphasis onto the visitor to make the change rather than the artist, by causing anger and controversy. I can certainly see the value of what he is doing but my conscious would struggle to create work like this.
There is of course the option to create digital work, which certainly resolves the storage issue of objects and materials. I enjoyed this process when making my first video piece last year when I plucked a tree, however I would miss the tactile nature of working with objects and the physicality of sculpting.
Floating landscapes
As a continuation of the ideas I was exploring in the ‘47% Green’ proposal I wanted to create an artwork that responded the idea of the allocation of green spaces in cities. I was inspired by the artist Jamie North’s Terraforma sculptures of living plants growing from man-made structures and the dynamic tension between the organic and non-organic.
I started to create two platforms, one square and the other an irregular geometric larger shape. The idea was to represent two types of manicured nature found within cities. The smaller square platform would be planted with neat rows of domestic garden flowers, such as pansies. The other platform would be filled with rows of grass turf.
I wanted these to be very defined areas with a framed lip containing the contents, as if they were horizontal landscape paintings. They are slightly elevated from the ground but low enough to be walked on if desired, as if stage platforms. They would also be on wheels and able to be pushed and posited around the gallery, changing the dynamics of the space around them.
Waste
For my assessment piece I decided to experiment with something completely new and quite radical in response to these issues I am working through. I decided to holt everything I was making, consciously leaving work unfinished in order to create a new piece of work, using the half-finished pieces and materials from the previously work I had started making and no more.
The half-finished artworks and materials are to be piled together as if fly tipped in the gallery space – a snap shot of the inevitable future of the pieces. My recorded voice plays from within the pile describing what the pieces could but never will be.
Although it could be perceived as a very cynical piece of work I was experimenting with the idea of whether these works ever really need to be made. The power of an idea over the physicality of it and whether if an idea is realised is it ever as perfect as the idea itself.
Areas of Research
Anthropocene
/ænˈθrɒpəˌsiːn/
noun
The Anthropocene, a proposed term for the present geological epoch (from the time of the Industrial Revolution onwards), during which humanity has begun to have a significant impact on the environment.
This term epitomises our current relationship with the environment and I’m particularly interested in how this is a recent state of being. It also highlights the impact that we are having on our planet through climate change and emphasises the severity of the situation. This is a new term that I have recently discovered and it will be a key word when describing my practice.