AboutEssays2006Waste Not Want Not

I shall show you fear in a handful of dust. T.S. Elliot

Civilisation is more commonly understood in relation to the grand concepts and conceits we have constructed through the centuries. Where as the arts, education and cultural traditions were used to define the achievements and pretensions of western society we now have waste. Whether it is the box from a little music playing device, depleated uranium, or fuel emissions, over-productive capitalist countries generate waste in accordance with their quantifiable “per capita’ affluency. The casual effects of choices made that inevitably contribute to growing wastefulness impacts ecologically and socio-politically to such an extent that to claim ‘waste’ as civilisations’ defining phenomenon, as philosopher George Bataille did, is not merely tree-hugging, lefty hyperbole. Bataille during his book 'La Part Maudite' developed this theory discussing the primacy of waste and saw expenditure as being modern societies defining feature.

Although Turk’s interest in re-assessing everyday banalities can be seen to have a haiku-like quality of looking beyond what at once appears uneventfully familiar, the objects chosen to ironically replicate through inherently dishonest tromp-loi, allows for a re-considering of their use and the wider macro issues associated with objects after they have served out their usefulness. We are left with matter that no longer fits the rational of utility but is here anyway, asking questions, proving problematic and getting in the way.

The use of semi precious metal to depict a card board box, an apple core or a disposable chip fork playfully subverts the value associated with the objects we think we see. Litter and Bronze have the streets in common. Traditionally bronze is found in our towns and cities cast into the poses of war and myth to celebrate and condition. These public monuments behave with absolutism, self-assured in the grand social narrative they symbolically represent. Rich men on horse back depict the failures of social and political systems that result in the profitable negation of humanistic logic. Turks sculptures also depict social failings. From the behavioural ambivalence of littering to the commercial over use of natural resources.

The humble objects occupy the same scheme as the statues only now we can all relate to what is in front of us and choose how we relate to it. These objects can serve as metaphor, as a clever trick, or as ready-mades processed in order to absurdly achieve the impossible. Their uncanny quality prompts us to re-evaluate our sense of the real and inevitably how our own value systems operate. Whether in relation to art history (perceptions of beauty, the still life and social-realism) or our shared social consciousness.