Speaking of Seeing: Trash

One woman's trash is another woman's treasure.
Photographer Bill Wadman and I look at how artists use trash as a visual currency, leading us to scrutinise our prejudices and our beliefs. We study the work of artist duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster, famed for their shadow sculptures constructed from piles of rubbish that make elegant shadow portraits. We wonder about their intentions, especially in the way they title their work and force us to enter their shared space through the waste they have generated. We view the photograph, The Last Resort, 25, by Martin Parr, questioning the conflation of social status and proximity to waste, and whether that means we are in fact thinking of others as trashy. We consider how, with an artist such as Douglas Coupland, we might confront what our waste means for the planet and how we can get past our lazy excuses for generating the volume of rubbish we create. Ultimately, we think about the connection between waste and death, with each discarded item an object of our identity. Though we may find our rubbish manifests a deep fear of loss, we puzzle over our blithe disregard for the things we no longer find useful, forgetting them immediately, before they have even reached landfill...
With thanks for Bill for his continuing support for the Speaking of Seeing project.