To the Gallery or to Landfill?

My work explores the materiality and ontology of ‘found objects’, particularly the discarded consumer waste I have collected from local coastal and urban environments. Through a multidisciplinary still life practice, including photographic, sculptural, curatorial and archival methods, I showcase and examine each object’s material journey, from their place in my own personal discovery through the act of gleaning to their transformation into a state of representational becoming.

Drawing on the philosophical frameworks of Object-Oriented Ontology and New Materialism, my work challenge assumptions about human impact on the non or other-than-human material world. With my installation work, I urge people to look deeply at the items they use and discard and engage with the ‘vibrant matter’ that each object emanates. By interpreting the found objects' material journeys, my work explores concerns of object agency, nature/culture entanglements, and the material stewardship of ecofeminist praxis.

Throughout my process, I am looking to find a new way of representing the items we throw away as a mirror to ourselves and our patterns of behaviour as consumers and human beings. Each individual object is a souvenir of an intimate human experience, a memory, a memento, or a reminder. The coastal foreshore is littered with human desires, met and then forgotten; littered objects used and then discarded.

My work is led by the questions: How do I continue (re)present these gleaned objects in a way that offers new ways of seeing the systems that dictate what we value and devalue in our society? And how might the visual representation of each object's materiality confront the psychology behind our consumer behaviours and abject compulsions to disregard the consequences of our behaviours in a time of climate uncertainty?