Hard Rubbish

I’m not wasteful, but during our demolition and fit out of the Brunswick gallery, we generated a decent-sized skipload of rubbish. It was filled with what I’d consider ‘rubbish rubbish’, that which I couldn’t imagine possibly being used or recycled. And yet, each day I’d note the disappearance of true rubbish. At one point a picker drove in with his trailer and set to work removing the wires from inside discarded lighting battens. He’d methodically strip them for the copper threads to sell to the local scrap metal dealer. I asked the going rate, and calculated his day’s labour as coming to the tens of dollars. Something of a depression era scene, and a glimpse of another world of a scavenging micro-economy. 

This skip got me thinking about the local relationship to rubbish. Of how exposed we are through our trash, and of the honesty of having it on display. I have a vague memory of a local artist some years back exhibiting documents pilfered from the bins of galleries, and have always felt some anxiety about what goes in the work bin. 

There are a few temporal touchpoints for the exhibition. It grows out of a particularly abject Melbourne aesthetic, and methods of Arte Povera and assemblage, using impoverished, everyday, discarded and gleaned materials. Artists of Arte Povera aimed for a radical rejection of the art market’s object-based consumption, though ironically this exhibition of the movement’s inheritors is presented in a commercial gallery. The artists here have practiced across a number of decades, spanning 60s bricolage though 80s found object, 90s grunge and abjection and 00s grot.

The materials used are remnant artefacts of consumption, no longer useful commodities, and so critique our consumerist society. There is also the hint of a Bunnings DIY aesthetic in some of these works, a joyous pleasure in crafting something from waste. Seeming past their use value, exhausted of capitalist value, freed of function, these waste products take on new potentialities. It’s a resourcefulness that many artists know well. An ability to see the potential within a material, a life for it beyond what was intended, and an alchemical quality. Let’s also be practical: this is a timely, cost-of-living appropriate show. In a time of climate and financial crisis, reusing scrap is an ethical and economic choice, alongside a conceptual and aesthetic decision. 

This exhibition is also tied to place. It is situated in Brunswick, in Merri-bek, which has always relished hard rubbish, perhaps more so than other municipalities. For years the biannual hard rubbish was a particularly suburban fiesta of promenading, swapping and recycling. My daughter delighted in finding a Barbie Dream Camper, which never would have entered our home otherwise. Over the course of the hard rubbish period, detritus would be so thoroughly picked that it was a delight to see just how terrible something would need to be to remain on the street (mattresses and water-logged MDF, primarily). When I moved house from Merri-bek to the more slightly more bourgeois Yarra Council, I missed this hard rubbish carnival, as we instead had to comply with a strictly policed pre-booked collection. And then, in 2022, much to my sadness, Merri-bek also went the way of the pre-booked rubbish collection. In the gentrifying hood, residents were growing tired of the messy streets. And so ultimately, this exhibition is something of an elegy for Merri-bek’s hard rubbish.

— DS

RRR Radio interview with Matthew Morrow

Gerry Bell, Melbourne Art Seen

Tiarney Miekus, The Age Weekend Picks, 14/12/24

Zoe Jackson in Gemma Topliss, ‘NGV Permanent Collection: Decorative Arts’, Memo, 30/11/24

Molly Cook completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (with Honours) at The Victorian College of the Arts in 2009. Since graduating she has exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions across Melbourne and Australia including TCB Art Inc, Rearview Gallery, Seventh Gallery, Nabe Studios, Stockroom Gallery and Sawtooth Gallery. She was the recipient of two funded shows at the George Paton Gallery and Trocadero Gallery. Cook works predominantly with found objects, recycled art works, and an expanded drawing practice. The mostly mixed media artworks contain sculptural structures, brightly drawn elements and flowers. The work explores ideas of feminism and the role of the mother. They are intentionally playful and blur the lines between art and craft and the role of the women as the maker.

Christopher L G Hill is an artist, poet, anarchist, collaborator, facilitator, curator, lover, friend, publisher of Endless Lonely Planet, noise wall proprietor, gardener, co-label boss; Bunyip trax, walker, homebody, dancer, considerate participator, dishwasher, graffiti bencher, eater, exhibitor: Goya Curtain, Sutton Projects, Savage Garden, Pricilla's, Asbestos, Sydney, Physics Room, Westspace, TCB, BUS, Punk Cafe,100 Grand street, Lismore Regional Gallery, Good Press, Gambia Castle, Conical, GCAS, NGV, VCA, Mission Comics, Slopes, Art Beat, Papakura Gallery, Neon Parc, UQ Gallery, Tate Modern, Connors Connors, Glasgow International, Sandy Brown, OFLUXO, New Scenarios, Margaret Lawrence, Flake, Utopian Slumps, World Food Books, Sutton, Rearview, Joint Hassles, a basement, a tree, Innen publications, SAM, Chateau 2F, etc, and tweeter, twitcher, sleeper, conversationalist, gallerist, musician & DJ; who represents themself.

Hill’s practice is idiosyncratically involved with that which surrounds it (peers included) in an anarcho poetry of sorts. Projects take the form of extended collage in sound, text and installation, as well as shifting sands of surface and conversations in paint, object, movement and grammar. Extensions of the practice include a two-year foray as co-director of Y3K Gallery (2009 - 2011), as well Dungeon and Meadow gallery, run in Gian Manik’s basement and a tree respectively.

Lou Hubbard’s practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and the moving image to understand the nature of training, submission and subordination. Basic materials of domestic and institutional utility—very often personal objects—are tried and tested, then shaped into formal relationships. Objects are subjected to various modes of control and duress, and emotional resonances are drawn out through careful selection and placement of these found and readily-at-hand materials.

Hubbard has exhibited widely throughout Australia and internationally, including group and solo exhibitions at Heide MOMA, Melbourne (2024), Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2023); Melbourne Now at The Ian Potter Centre, NGV (2023); Kunsteverein, Amsterdam (2023); MONA FOMA, Launceston (2019); Lim Hak Tai Gallery, Singapore (2018); TarraWarra Museum of Art (2016); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2015); Gaia Gallery, Istanbul (2015); West Space, Melbourne (2015); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013-14); Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2013); Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin (2011-12); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2010); Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2010); and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2009).

Hubbard is currently senior lecturer in Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Lou Hubbard is represented by Sarah Scout Presents.

Zoe Jackson is a multidisciplinary artist living in Melbourne. Her practice explores the metaphysics of aesthetics with a focus on personal ephemera. Often using found materials that show signs of a previous domestic or intimate usage, Zoe's works suggest the interchangeability of objective and subjective experience. Zoe completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2020 and the Maumaus Independent Study Programme in Lisbon in 2023. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include Cache Melbourne (2024); 220A Lisbon (2023); Shop Betrayal Melbourne (2022); TCB Art Inc. (2022). Recent group exhibitions include Asbestos Melbourne (2024); Bus Projects Melbourne (2024); Holden Garage Berlin (2022); Conners Conners (2022).

Jordan Marani makes darkly humorous work involving personal narratives, cynical observations of the human condition and explorations of family, loss and the past. Through painting and sculpture employing bright colour, humour and word play, he explores the funny side of the dark side.  Marani makes art of the everyday, reflecting his immediate surroundings and community. His work is drawn from such crude and everyday references as suburban life, popular culture, booze, football, the art world and family history. Early works used materials from scavenged, recycled and reclaimed rubbish, such as paintings on boards salvaged from skips, bottletops, and food packaging, and from basic and impoverished materials, such as cardboard and house paint. Recent works continue to utilise humble materials, such as bed sheets and handkerchiefs, alongside more formal and polished works on board and canvas. Marani blends lowbrow culture with high art, with an insistence on the value of the working class and crass. 

From 2008-2011 Jordan was co-founder and director of Hell Gallery. His work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Victoria, NADA New York, Minor Attractions Art Fair, London, the Spinnerei Leipzig, SOCIAL Hobart, Shepparton Art Museum, Static Gallery Liverpool, Switchback Gallery, 200 Gertrude Street, Daine Singer, Neon Parc, Utopian Slumps, Ryan Renshaw, Ray Hughes Gallery, Powell Street Gallery and at ARIs including Death Be Kind, Inflight, Seventh, and West Space. He has participated in residencies at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany, Driving Creek Pottery in Aotearoa New Zealand, Police Point Artist-in-Residence Program Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Australia Council Liverpool Residency and Gertrude Contemporary. His work is held in the collections of the Yarra City Council, Merri-bek Art Collection, LIA Leipzig, and Ararat Textile Art Museum.

Jordan Marani is represented by Daine Singer

Matthew Morrow is an artist and rubbish removalist from Naarm/ Melbourne. Selected solo exhibitions include West Space, Hell Gallery and George Gallery, as well as group exhibitions throughout the 1990s at Goya Galleries, Meridian, Rhumbarellas, Ray Hughes, Tolarno, Powell Street Gallery, 101 Collins Street and Deutscher Gallery. Morrow’s artworks are held in private and public collections including Artbank and Deakin University.  He is owner of Ricky’s Rubbish and has worked with rubbish since 1995.

Louise Paramor is best known for her colourful large scale sculptures and public art commissions. In 1985, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (in painting) from the West Australian Institute for Technology, Perth and in 1988 she completed a Post Graduate Diploma (in sculpture) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Paramor was awarded the McClelland sculpture survey & award in 2010 for her work Top shelf, which is now in McClelland’s permanent collection. She has been the recipient of numerous commissions including the permanent public sculpture commission for the Peninsula Link Freeway in Melbourne, where she created the monumental, Panorama Station, 2012. Paramor’s work is in the collections of the NGV, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Monash University Museum of Art, Glen Eira City Council, and Merri-Bek City Council. Recent selected exhibitions include Melbourne Sculpture Biennale (2024), Geelong Gallery (2023), The Ian Potter Centre: NGV, Australia (2017); Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Sydney (2019); Geraldton Regional Art Gallery, WA (2019).

Steven Rendall’s work is littered with references to technology, art history, horror movies, weird fiction and pop music. Materials, images and meanings are scavenged and rearranged via various methods including painting, sculpture and video.

Rendall was born in the UK in 1969. He moved to Melbourne in 2000 where he currently lives and works as a lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT University. He completed a BVA (Honours) at DeMontfort University in Leicester (1990-93), undertook post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in London (1993-96) and completed a PhD at Monash University in 2015. Rendall has staged numerous exhibitions in Australia and elsewhere including Collision Drive at Wimbledon College of Arts (2019).

His work is in private and public collections including The National Gallery of Victoria; The Monash University Collection; Artbank; RMIT University Art Collection; Geelong Gallery; Bendigo Art Gallery; The City of Melbourne; St. Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne; St. Helier Hospital London. He is a finalist in the 2024 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize and recently exhibited works at Heide Museum of Modern Art (2023); Blindside (2023) and RMIT Gallery (2023).

Steven Rendall is represented by Niagara Galleries

Murray Walker has been making art about people, myth and narrative since the 1960s. From his early figure studies as a printmaker, to more recent explorations of street culture in Paris and Berlin as a collagist and painter, Walker has continually reflected on the human condition—in all of its beauty and fright. Although Walker grapples with themes including death, depravity, sex and social misfortune, his work is often inflected with humour, spiritedness and a sense of youthful freedom.  Of his work Professor Sasha Grishin, AM, FAHA says “His work is tough, awkward and unconventional; it is vivid and brilliant in its inventiveness; as well as provocative, challenging and possessing a huge sense of presence. He worships bricolage, chance and believes in the power of the found object with its endless range of associative possibilities”. Selected recent exhibitions include Murray Walker: Walk of Life, Heide Cottage, Heide Museum of Modern Art (2023), Spanning Time, Fox Galleries, Melbourne (2021), Helter Skelter, John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne (2014), Assemblages and Sculpture, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne (2012, 2008).

Murray Walker is represented by Fox Galleries.