As with most art, the art of TRASH has been redefined by its adherents to reflect the moment. At times we keep it proudly displayed in cans or bins in our homes. However, when it is ripe we take it outside and place it in a toter for our neighbors to view.

While pop art focused on consumer products as both the subject and the commodification of art as concept; TRASH ART utilizes post-consumer waste and TRASH as subject, while recycling aesthetic qualities of Dadaism to form a "new work that reflects the standard notions of art”.

This is the cycle of TRASH ART. It has come to mean anything from the variety of waste we create from our homes and from the 'art' we see in the form of human waste. To trash is to disregard anything that is not worthy of being a commodity in our ever-growing consumerism.

I think it's hard for us to grasp the value of our collective personal rubbish in relation to the larger costs of our collective production and consumption. When we turn our natural waste into an object of beauty, it is to escape the moral, ethical and social issues our human society continues to face, but in doing so we obfuscate these very issues.

Both in conceptual art and more broadly in the context of popular culture, we are confronted with a constant and ever-changing stream of TRASH ART. While there is something therapeutic about confronting our true, underlying values in the public domain, I think we have to face these issues within ourselves.

Trash as art does not directly challenge the future direction of human civilisation. While we should certainly not be complacent in the face of our future ecological devastation, I feel there is a large disconnect between the urgency of our natural crisis and the triviality of our public discourse around it.

It is not enough to talk about consumption without considering the social and environmental costs. I am far more interested in addressing these issues within ourselves and our society. I think we, as a species, need to find a way to escape the mundane problems we currently face and return to our raw primal, uncivilised roots.

We want to hear your TRASH ART STORIES - which is something we can all relate to, and we’d be delighted to hear your stories. How do you engage with the TRASH culture? What does it mean to you? What can we learn from it?

Have you ever felt a genuine connection with the subject matter of a piece of TRASH ART? Have you ever loved it for its raw form and shock value?

Or do you look at it, and dismiss it as rubbish?

Why do you?

GPT-3

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