UNDIGESTIBLE 2018

details

:::: temporary site specific intervention within prisitine rainforest context
:::: finalist, Sculpture at Scenic World 2018, Katoomba, NSW
:::: mixed media - shrink wrap and salvaged household rubbish collected largely from streets of Katoomba
:::: dimensions variable

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artist statement

UNDIGESTIBLE holds bare the actualities of our ways, the STUFF of our daily lives with obsolescence built into their very intent ... a collective avalanche of cost and consequence.

description

Set within a pristine rainforest valley, UNDIGESTIBLE is an installation of household rubbish [non organic] salvaged largely from the streets of Katoomba.

Along with haphazardly positioned items that sit easily within the biomass of the forest floor, there also exists a dispersion of what appear to be several raised anthropomorphic and translucent sack elements, held either grafted to tree trunks or suspended from overhead branches.

The work exists throughout a sizable zone along a raised and snaking boardwalk.

Discarded to the streets and destined for landfill, the salvaged content include toys, tools, whitegoods, electronics, home accessories and much more.

In terms of “form making”, the shrink-wrapped sack elements were inspired by a distant memory of having witnessed a spider [type unknown to me] handling its prey of a moth, which in scale was easily more than three times its own body in volume. With fully outreached legs it held and violently spun the eventually compliant moth along its central axis, as though it were a spindle. This, while wrapping it with what appeared to be a continuous production of webbing in the form of sheet, not string. It then proceeded to dangle its now mummified victim from a branch, presumably to be had later.

The suggestion here may be that a strange beast has likewise picked its prey from amongst the dumped, and cocooned it for eventual juice extraction. Unlike the moth however, the junk here - whether it were left on the ground or mummified, will refuse to be digested, or at least not without consequence ...

acknowledgements

The successful realisation of the work is indebted to the expert support and professional facilitation provided by Justin Morrissey [Exhibition Manager] and Clytie Smith [Technical Co-Ordinator].

I would like to in particularly acknowledge the hands on team consisting of Kate Reid [rigger], Matt Scholes [arborist], Kathleen Linn and Andrew Cook for their assistance, advice and generosity of spirit … thank you.