The use of scrap material in any form brings its past use into the frame because nothing appears out of thin air without meaning something first. But I think the real question is, how far can you detach it from that? How can you conceptually eliminate something that you possess? Surely the plucking of a waste or scrap material from drawer-bound obscurity creates a paradox of new significance in that it’s no longer waste.
I would say that this nearly-new work, “Choice Material”, deals with this question of intention versus randomisation, or more specifically, non-art as art. But more on the work later.
Non-art as art is by no means anything new, there is a long history of ‘the everyday’ as a major part of Modernist thinking – art as life, the photo-montage, pop, arte povera – in which the mundane is transformed into that untouchable thing that all good art possesses, that you think about it when you’re walking back from the shop in the middle of the afternoon.
On the subject of the everyday and art, it would be criminal to negate what Kurt Schwitters’ Merz did to help establish it and how artists such as Robert Rauschenberg consequently developed on its themes as a reaction to pop. Initially born out of Cubism, German art of the period was largely led by the irrational sentiment that hung over Europe during the course of the First World War. In the following years however, many Dada-affiliated artists decided to go their own way once the scene effectively started to eat itself – Schwitters being a case in point.
His was an interesting career to say the least and the fragmentary nature of his work reflected his life in many ways; I don’t think many artists have experienced and suffered as much as he did in so many different places. Shunned as a ‘Degenerate artist’, exiled to Norway, fled to Scotland, placed in several political refugee camps before living in London and finally the Lake District; numerous deaths and tragedy along the way but most significantly having his masterwork, the Merzbau - a living, Constructivist installation that spread over several rooms of his family home in Hanover - destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943.
Enough for several volumes you would think, of which there are, so I’m not going to divulge, but as mentioned, his principle of Merz is undeniably relevant to “Choice Material”. By collecting items from the time and including them in his pictures, Schwitters affirmed non-art as being more powerful than any traditional artistic gesture, in many cases using them as the basis for composition and not as ‘padding’ - the sense I get from most Cubist works of this type - but the potency of the object leads onto why he might have chosen something over something else. Why use a bus ticket when you have an exhibition poster or a test print? That in itself is interesting – what did he consciously not include?
The same can be said for Rauschenberg, who once said that Schwitters “made it all for me” when referencing a show of his in the fifties. I consider Rauschenberg to be hugely indebted to artists like Schwitters but he took things in a more graphic and sculptural direction that addressed the issues of consumerism, mass product and the changing artistic gesture in the real world. His use of transfer printing especially highlights the original processes of production of what he decided to use. Such methodical honesty and systematic truth to material has been a key aspect of discussion around recent artworks, given that doctored images are breathing down everyone’s necks.
The conception of “Choice Material” came as a result of “First Past the Post”, a work that in its method of production at least, was very similar. The inclusion of the audience (in the social media driven world of today) is vital to both pieces in that it’s my attempt at trying to lose connection with the significance of the objects by removing myself as the decision maker. “First Past the Post” worked as an idea and successfully dealt with political and aesthetic connotations but was always limited by its own content. The audience could only choose, or more specifically vote, from a selection of nine colours and it became prosaically predictable. What “Choice Material” aims to do mix that interactive element with waste, uselessness and the truly unpredictable nature of first impression.
Each round of voting is based on a changing selection of what I consider to be scrap material from various places, guises and past projects. Their personal connotations (or any remains of sentiment) are obviously present but cannot be really felt by the viewer. In addition to this, I have found it fascinating how that in this work, the ‘evidence’ of my past works (photos, working drawings etc) has taken equal standing to recent newspaper adverts and crap that has been lying around for ages. The fact that it is work means relatively nothing because it’s up for the public vote. In fact, it was a recent comment from my Serbian collaborator, Sara Radomirovic, that mentioned sacrifice, cutting and the perceived sadness of it all that made me think of the ‘do-I-don’t- I’ Day Rider complex from school, which in turn influenced this essay.
I see this work as a type of Merz for the present day. By being, for the most part, publically controlled via social media, the significance of each object has been reduced to a reaction, either though recognition or personal preference, of which I know nothing about because I merely ‘arrange’ these thoughts like election night results. Ultimately, it’s like what Danny says at the end of Bruce Robinson’s “Withnail & I” - “Why trust one drug and not the other? That’s politics, innit?”
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“Choice Material” is an interactive, time based artwork. If you are interested in collaborating and taking part as a voter then more information can be found on Instagram @samvickersart or by following #choicematerialartproject