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Refuse Culture: Archaeology of Consumption uses multiple installations, and installations of multiples, to consider the remnants and debris of human activity littering the planet’s surface. Each installation revolves around an object, or fragment of an object, taken from daily life. Cellphones, plastic bags, car bumper covers, compact fluorescent light bulbs, these objects of everyday are seldom disposed of with the same degree of order, reverence or celebration with which they were created and acquired. By collecting these objects together, the works amplify a contemporary narrative of consumption. Cast in porcelain, the objects mimic the archaeological evidence left to us from preceding generations and ask the viewer to question how the future might interpret our culture through these collections of fragments.
Long obsessed with our relationship to, and use of, material, when I had the opportunity to participate in ceramic art residencies in China, Canada, USA and Denmark I developed a project that would examine and explore this relationship. The idea was to create works that explored the vernacular and colloquial aspects of this connection. After all, every culture has a distinct relationship to the environment as expressed in the detritus left in its wake. Surely China would present a unique taxonomy of consumption as compared to Canada, the United States or Denmark. In my search for these differences I realized that the overwhelming power of the project lay in the
commonalities and scale of the global consumption movement rather than the few remaining differences. As a result, Refuse Culture: archaeology of consumption became about the seamlessness and universality of the contemporary human condition as expressed in our lifestyle of consumption.
By creating material narratives, these installations document various aspects of human activity through constituent parts or object fragments. These may be held together or strewn apart, and the work captures and arranges this kinetic diffusion of material at a specific point in time, exploring scale and space in the context of consumption culture. The narratives or installations are part fiction and part non-fiction, and each narrative takes its cue from the different culture/countries where the residencies took place.
The scale of the works is an infinitesimal reflection of the scale of the production, use or prevalence of a given object or idea in relation to human scale. The ordering principal behind many of the works reinforces some of the initial thinking behind the pieces or it is influenced by ideas fleshed out during the creative process. There are also autobiographical aspects to the installations where recent and distant personal history has influenced the process. All of this is interwoven and influenced by contemporary discourse regarding the particular objects or consumption behaviours being referred to in a given piece.