Product Recall

I have long been interested in how packaging and waste relate to the value we find in ordinary store-bought objects. During a 2009 artist residency, I became obsessed with overconsumption and packaging materials as I sought to transform my own packaging waste into art.

These sculptures (primarily 2009-2016) play with the idea of contemporary art as a luxury product. Each of the pieces involves actual consumer goods or reproductions of these, sometimes in combination with cast body parts or activated in some way by viewers’ bodies. They clearly reference seemingly mundane everyday objects bought and sold in vast quantities in supermarket shelves and stores, rather than forms commonly found on pedestals within art galleries and museums.

By distorting manufactured goods in wood, ceramics, resin and textiles, I explored value in materials and forms. Whereas most retail products come shrink-wrapped and we constantly shove waste we are unable to recycle into teeming plastic bags, art in galleries is rarely shown encumbered by the trappings of a crate or carrying case. Remaking mass-produced objects as singular objects was a humorous way to explore the aura around originals. In one piece, I modified and recast styrofoam kebab containers in blue-and-white porcelain to undermine the low status and value of common, everyday materials.