Surplus and Creativity 2009
In the 21st century products of all kinds, shapes and forms are manufactured at unprecedented rates. They fill our homes, offices, and storage spaces. When the lives of these products are over, they are dumped or discarded to storage. These surplus ‘things' still contain embedded value, untold stories, and the possibility of different applications and life in a third age.
Surplus and Creativity: Design and the Readymade originated as a competition aiming to stimulate affiliates of Affect to engage in a playful and creative way with the concept of the readymade. The competition brief was to recontextualise surplus or discarded objects to produce a new vision of use, understanding or comment. The project aimed to attract entries infused with immediacy, action and creativity; providing the opportunity to publicly exhibit the best of our creative efforts.
Contestants rose admirably to the challenge of recontextualising (Wendy Neale's Bearing Ring) and rearranging (Jürgen Waibel's Ready-Made Sediment) discarded readymade items. Entries make social and political comment (Chris Jackson's Bean Bag Bench); and embody imagination and creativity (Sue Prescott's Formica Walls and Sofa Covers, Victims of Renovation?).
The exhibition design itself responds to the competition brief, reusing waste materials drawn from warehouse storage en route to recycling. The obsolete canisters and their packaging gain new life as structural elements in the exhibition and will live again at its conclusion through recycling.
Please click here to download the exhibition catalogue.
