The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away - Ilya Kabakov

I first heard of this book when I read a short excerpt of it from another book called The Archive. I was fascinated with it from start to finish - the idea of someone being consumed by a concept so overwhelmingly. I was astonished when I stumbled upon the following images of Kabakov's installations which illustrate the text, and to find out that he was actually an artist, rather than an author.

"The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away is an installation by artist Ilya Kabakov which was setup in London between 1985-1988. The artist filled three rooms with garbage, ordinary and discarded items that were collected by the imaginary owner of the apartment. The items were neatly labelled and organized on tables, in cabinets, and on charts that covered the walls. Below eavh item a peice of paper explained its origin.

The work belongs now in the permanent collection of Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, in Oslo, Norway."

http://the-value-of-garbage.tumblr.com/post/11173987957/the-man-who-never-threw-anything-away-i

Installation, 1985-88. London.

Installation, strung garbage labelled, 2006. MIT Libraries Dome.

Available at Chapters/Indigo. 

It will be mine!

Artist website http://www.ilya-emilia-kabakov.com/

Song Dong - Waste Not

"Beijing-based artist Song Dong (b. 1966) explores notions of transience and impermanence with installations that combine aspects of performance, video, photography, and sculpture. Projects 90, his first solo U.S. museum show, presents his recent work Waste Not. A collaboration first conceived of with the artist's mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over fifty years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not", was a prerequisite for survival."

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/961

To view the extraordinary artist book made for this installation, the video of the exhibits construction, or for general information visit http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/961

Playing With Paper

Papermaking always relaxes me. I find solace in the quiet calm of the paper studio. After being inspired last week, I decided to take a break from printing to just play.

This piece was inspired by a book a friend lent me called The Archive. In it is an excerpt from a book called The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away by Ilya Kabakov. In it he talks about how all of us have accumulated piles of paper either on our desk, or in the kitchen, or on our coffee tables. Every once in a while we take the time to sort through these papers and organize them into sub-categories: receipts, mementos, bills, garbage, etc. But what if you honestly couldn't differentiate between what was important and what was garbage? Then everything would be of the same value.

I always have these little piles of papers around my room, so I brought a bag of them into the studio and used them to illustrate this point. Text from the book will later be printed on top of the finished paper.

Started with a thick base sheet of cotton linter and flax noils.

Started layering accumulated papers from home.

Laminating found papers between sheets of handmade paper, then repeating.

Continued until layers were nearly indistinguishable from one another.

Finished product soon to be posted.

Hope Gangloff

Hope Gangloff is an artist based out of New York who makes beautiful works out of ink and acrylic paint. I love her intricately textured line work and controlled sense of colour. She really captures snapshot moments of everyday life, of the utterly mundane. She makes me want to lie in bed all day and sketch.

www.hopegangloff.com