The Democracy of Rubbish

The Democracy of Rubbish is the first independent exhibition curated by Bonnie Reyniers, Elitsa Harbova, and Pandora Burns, with the support of Morgan O’Brien. This exhibition is a collaboration between a small group of artist who are exploring the process of where our individual art develops as a practice and how the materials we use affect where we take it – from paper to canvas, from sculpture to installation.

We’d wondered if a white cube space would be able to relate to our theme, and started to search for alternative spaces. Our show became a question of ‘how do we define art?’. Can you take a non-traditional space and turn it into a successful gallery? As an extension of this, can you use non-traditional materials to make art? This idea mirroring our use of non-art materials to create art and the inspiration for our exhibition was born.

The Democracy of Rubbish is in essence an experimental exhibition that attempts to examine our ideas and expectations of what an art exhibition is. It focuses on a singular preoccupation that draws attention to a lesser explored aspect of the working artist. Do we simply make aesthetically pleasing work for people to admire over or do we question society and offer up an opening for a conversation not previously approachable? It is arguably the most interesting artist who respond to, and reflect on, these social and cultural ideas regarding our practice as artist.

We witness constant interventions in our daily lives and are only ever afford glimpses into a wider picture. We are a consumerist society obsessed with the latest fashion object and throw away perfectly fine materials that have not yet reach their due-date. As witnesses we rarely fully understand what we see, and as artist, we are rarely able to fully describe what it is that we have seen. What is most compelling about the works in this exhibition is the diversity of materials, processes, and techniques used to achieve a different outcome with the same base implication that question our preconceived notions of art.