W h a t i s t h i s
what is this
eco-art craze
for mass replication?
assemblage
bottle tops stickers
brand labels tin boxes
usually colourful
tiny plastic bits
packing the ocean
shiny aluminium trinkets
manufactured reproduction
churning out
the garbage
nespresso coffee pods
for artists
to collect
a couple of centuries
mechanical
production reproduction
& 3D's
thermoplastic
*
saturday morning
at the markets
for vegetables
fruit eggs
&
to visit
big art
at the same place
which seems
kind of 'Sydney'
(coffee organic farmers' market
at an art & performance venue)
over-anthropomorphised dogs
on decorated leashes
hyper-active children
on streamer-decorated scooters
tearing around
squealing in the cabbage leaves
everything's
a festival
calming down
against a sunlit wall
finicking
peeling
a small coloured fruit sticker
from a mango
without damaging either
I think I saw
a Chinese artist
recycling these
working
a kind of woeful narrative
out of thousands of fruit stickers
(or did I imagine it?)
in vast
industrial warehouse
galleries
defunct
railway carriage workshops
converted empty factories
disused powerhouses
hours
& hours
& hours
& hours
of labour
to construct
these heaps & groups of pieces
the effort
is admirable
yes definitely
(does anyone have assistants?)
El Anatsui's
Klimty wall hanging
is beautiful
a very large
wavy glistering shawl
glamorous
made from alcohol bottle tops
sewn together with copper wire
the notes say
the artworks
'examine the complex histories of post-colonial Africa
and the issues of consumption, waste and the environment.'
activist art
could sit well
in luxury 5 star foyers
or exclusive nightclubs
too inured to habit
to know my littering
as a correctional encumbrance
(own your own rubbish)
'activist' art
Ai Wei Wei's
multiple orange lifejackets
hundreds of them
discarded by arriving refugees
attached to the Ionic columns
of Konzerthaus Berlin
seems too easy even artless(?)
gesturing for a headline
what does it do?
(what can it do?)
this must have
(as all else has)
begun with capital
capital's machines
Duchamp
Nevelson
Warhol
failing
into swank exorbitance
maybe
what about
Kurt Schwitters
what about
ready mades
what about
Cornell's boxes
&
junk sculptors
Jean Tinguely
Robert Klippel
Philip Hammial
feral fossickers
smaller scale
non-repetitive
single objects
reshapers
rebuilding machines
from obsolete parts
reimagining
to imagine again
______________________________________________
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian artist who lives & works in Nigeria
Robert Klippel & Philip Hammial are Australian sculptors
