What a Waste…

At the Broadworks artist shop I created a window display that celebrated the traditional Christmas vignettes of consumerism, and subverted them at the same time. With Elisabetta Antonucci, we used as much of our recycled artwork as possible, alongside scraps from our storage. The result stayed on display throughout Christmas attracting cheer and scorn. Draped in pinks and precious metallics, the whole piece is a series of degenerative consumerist loops, luscious and tacky, just like Christmas. At the centre of the piece, a digestive system, lovingly made for a previous show, consumes and poops out bears under the care of Big Margaret. A train circles the centrepiece in glittering gold, to the delight of a mechanised bear; protest signs proclaim ambiguous messages of recycling under a giant star rotating through the spectrum.

“Big Margaret comforts the digestive system. What a busy system! All day long things are consumed and turned into waste, releasing their energy. All production is a process of generating waste. Art is no different. We look to turn this waste into useful things, to reduce the wastage, to suck out every potential it may have, to extend its life into nightmares and dreams.”