Stan Denniston

re-new it

February 4, 2017 – February 25, 2017

After my first exhibition of mash-ups, I became the willing, but wary, recipient of a rush of other’s prized consumer cast-offs and yet more damaged sculpture. I sensed in this out-pouring more than just goodwill towards my project. I got a glimpse of people’s complicated relationship with excess and disposal. Getting rid of something is never simply an act of disposal – a spatial displacement. Our possessions have entanglements. And, whereas consumption might be seen as a social activity, disposal is personal, private.

These are new works from discarded material – including cannibalizing my own productive surplus (sculptures) – old things gaining new meanings. Of all the categories of consumer objects, such as tools, white goods (fridges, stoves, etc.), communication devices, art objects are never meant for casual disposal. They are for ‘forever’. After all, art objects can appreciate in influence and value over time (and we all want to participate in that).

I’m aware of the irony that that I’m making more objects while penning this plea for less. And I would never claim my practice of re-purposing objects as any solution to our deluge of garbage, but it can continue the conversation. Surely, as we develop an ethic of sustainability, disposal has to become the primary consideration of the (highly simplified) arc of production, consumption, disposal. Consumption should never be unencumbered.