(de)composed
The compost series began simply.
After a day of meetings where little was accomplished, I returned home to the task of turning the contents of our compost box. It was a welcome chore, an opportunity to enjoy the fresh air that proved to be the most consequential activity of the day. It was a portal to uncluttered thinking. Moreover an act of turning and aerating means that, left alone, compost does what it does best. It becomes humus. While the day's earlier agenda had accomplished little, in a useful way, I was able to engage in a genuinely creative act. Form and Function were as one and I made use of the time to imagine a 'visual history' of composting.
As I contemplated the task, I recalled reading Eccentric Gardens (1990) Jane Owen's book that documents gardeners' imaginative and idiosyncratic approaches to ornamentation that produce aesthetically provocative and visually entertaining environments. Resolved to discover whether such sensibilities had been applied to the design of compost boxes, I posted on-line to gardening groups stressing my interest in the unusual and asking whether anybody had first-hand knowledge of a gardener's creativity that produced an aesthetically eccentric compost box. I received many replies but none that saw beyond a question of how to make good compost in a well designed compost box. It appears that compost boxes are not subject to embellishment or aesthetic quirkiness.
I did discover is that the notion of creating compost in a box is close to the same vintage as me. The compost box was a wartime (1940s) innovation for recycling kitchen waste as the means to nourish and support domestic vegetable growth. Other than its distant cousin the midden, there wasn't really a history to research, resurrect or reconstruct.
With limited exposure to the world of compost boxes beyond our own construction, I set out to create a series of five small, working-models each designed to be assembled for display and disassembled for transportation. The idea was to evoke the function of a traveling salesman. Each working model was accompanied by a promotional poster that included an appropriate compostial aphorism.
In keeping with the spirit of composting, each box was built with reclaimed, repurposed wood. Likewise, the design of each box and its accompanying poster recycled styles and sensibilities of architects, artists and craftsmen whose work interests me and who were working at a time proximate to the alleged creation of each box.
A Box for Ranulf, is based on the great columns in Durham Cathedral - an architectural favourite of mine. Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham from 1099-1128, is generally accepted as the church leader who oversaw completion of Durham Cathedral and it was but a small step for me to imagine that, as they worked the monastic gardens, Flambard's Benedicine brothers would have wanted access to compost. While not precisely contemporary to the completion of the cathedral, the styles of 14th century French and 15th century German woodcuts seemed right for the poster. David Lamari, lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, was good-humoured and generous enough to respond to a request for Latin translation of what seemed to be an appropriate aphorism for this compost box. David provided: herbas concidere ad eas putrefaciendas - cut up vegetation to decompose it.
After a day of meetings where little was accomplished, I returned home to the task of turning the contents of our compost box. It was a welcome chore, an opportunity to enjoy the fresh air that proved to be the most consequential activity of the day. It was a portal to uncluttered thinking. Moreover an act of turning and aerating means that, left alone, compost does what it does best. It becomes humus. While the day's earlier agenda had accomplished little, in a useful way, I was able to engage in a genuinely creative act. Form and Function were as one and I made use of the time to imagine a 'visual history' of composting.
As I contemplated the task, I recalled reading Eccentric Gardens (1990) Jane Owen's book that documents gardeners' imaginative and idiosyncratic approaches to ornamentation that produce aesthetically provocative and visually entertaining environments. Resolved to discover whether such sensibilities had been applied to the design of compost boxes, I posted on-line to gardening groups stressing my interest in the unusual and asking whether anybody had first-hand knowledge of a gardener's creativity that produced an aesthetically eccentric compost box. I received many replies but none that saw beyond a question of how to make good compost in a well designed compost box. It appears that compost boxes are not subject to embellishment or aesthetic quirkiness.
I did discover is that the notion of creating compost in a box is close to the same vintage as me. The compost box was a wartime (1940s) innovation for recycling kitchen waste as the means to nourish and support domestic vegetable growth. Other than its distant cousin the midden, there wasn't really a history to research, resurrect or reconstruct.
With limited exposure to the world of compost boxes beyond our own construction, I set out to create a series of five small, working-models each designed to be assembled for display and disassembled for transportation. The idea was to evoke the function of a traveling salesman. Each working model was accompanied by a promotional poster that included an appropriate compostial aphorism.
In keeping with the spirit of composting, each box was built with reclaimed, repurposed wood. Likewise, the design of each box and its accompanying poster recycled styles and sensibilities of architects, artists and craftsmen whose work interests me and who were working at a time proximate to the alleged creation of each box.
A Box for Ranulf, is based on the great columns in Durham Cathedral - an architectural favourite of mine. Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham from 1099-1128, is generally accepted as the church leader who oversaw completion of Durham Cathedral and it was but a small step for me to imagine that, as they worked the monastic gardens, Flambard's Benedicine brothers would have wanted access to compost. While not precisely contemporary to the completion of the cathedral, the styles of 14th century French and 15th century German woodcuts seemed right for the poster. David Lamari, lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, was good-humoured and generous enough to respond to a request for Latin translation of what seemed to be an appropriate aphorism for this compost box. David provided: herbas concidere ad eas putrefaciendas - cut up vegetation to decompose it.
A Box for Gustav is named for Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) whose Catalogue of Craftsman Houses and Furniture offers almost everything required for contemporary living. But Stickley did not provide the design of a compost box. In his catalogue, Stickley writes "Anybody who knows Craftsman furniture has no difficulty in realizing that the principles upon which it is based are honesty and simplicity." Clearly, the crux of this maxim, honesty and simplicity, is equally applicable when making compost. For the poster, the style and imagery of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) felt like an appropriate complement to Stickley's vision for holistic living. In 1902, Mucha published Documents Decoratifs that presented samples and patterns in the style of arts and crafts designers. Mucha seemed to be an excellent fit as co-designer of a poster.
A Box for Hubert & Henry brings together painter Sir Hubert Von Herkomer (1849-1914) and architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886) two Victorians who shared their interests and skills in tangible ways. Von Herkomer traded Richardson a portrait-sitting for architectural plans of what became Von Herkomer's home and art school in Bushey, Hertfordshire. The house went on to be known as Lululaund. Lulu was companion to Von Herkomer’s wife and, when Mrs. Von Herkomer died, Lulu became Von Herkomer's companion and later his wife. Tragically, when saving a child from being run down by a carriage, Lulu suffered the premature birth and death of her own child. Lulu died a few weeks later of a heart attack and Von Herkomer named the new house for her adding Laund: 'woodland pasture'. As real-life Victorian melodrama, this story checks all the boxes. Today, however, only the carved stone entry to Lululaund remains and this was the feature I borrowed as a facade for Hubert & Henry's compost box. For the poster I adapted Hubert's, "In the making of a house, rationalism and aestheticism must go hand in hand; the first being the active agent of convenience and comfort, the latter being of form" (The Life and Letters of Sir Hubert von Herkomer. 1923 page 207) A Canadian connection to Lululaund is that, for a short time, Emily Carr (1871-1945) attended Von Herkomer's school at Bushey. Ironically, for a decade I lived a mere stone's throw from Lululaund but knew nothing of its existence.
The Boxes for Ben and Garry bring together Benjamin Moore's compostably-named house-paints (carrot, hay, fresh grass, etc.) with three elements from Garry Neill Kennedy's work: An American History Painting: the Complete List of Pittsburgh Paints Historic Colours (1989); the appropriation of the cartoon Finchwell (1986); and Analytical Color Work (1978). All three provided inspiration for the poster. The slats of the large box, one set of which is removable for easy access to the contents, display the names of the paint colours while the sides of the small box carry each colour's identity code. The poster includes a Finchwellian admonition 'I don't care how rushed you are! To decompose vegetation, first cut it up. You'll do it properly or you won't be paid!'
A Box for Captain Pomo - a mildly autobiographical work - is primarily a design response to the derivative and questionable taste of much Post-Modern architecture. Michael Benedikt in For An Architecture of Reality (1987) writes, "The rise of postmodernism had little to do with its proclaimed ideals, namely, the creation of a richer, more complex, more symbolic and therefore more humane architecture than was possible in the Modern Movement. When architects create plywood arches, chromed Ionic columns, or concrete garlands, the arch is not a real arch to anyone, nor the column a real column, the garland a garland. These are quite simply appreciated for the novel things they are." By contrast, the accompanying poster borrows from the very best of classic comic books; in particular, the late Jack Kirby's text and illustration style for The Fantastic Four and Captain America (1968). This poster text reads: Like a person possessed, the costumed composter is back at work. Knowing that the odds are against him and, unheeding of the time and energy that surely it must take, his anguished mind keeps insisting, 'we will never be truly fulfilled until every leaf is properly turned!’
A Box for Rachel, while the least box-like, is nonetheless potentially functional in that it has the capacity to contain and aerate its contents. The Rachel of note is Rachel Whiteread whose cast sculptures of books are provocative and ingenious exercises in recycling. In an interview with Craig Houser when asked why in the Holocaust Memorial Whiteread hid the names and titles of the books, she responded "I don't think that looking at memorials should be easy. You know, it's about looking; it's about challenging; it's about thinking. Unless it does that, it doesn't work." Whiteread's words are adapted for the poster: "Making compost should be easy. You know, it's about sorting; it's about heaping; it's about turning. Unless you do that, it doesn't work."
Nine Palimpsest Paintings, eleven Small Glasses and the Audio Compost Box each incorporate reference to the word compost as found in novels. The authors use compost as metaphor, scene-setter, locale or simply as something noticed in passing. Whatever the case, the fact that each author found a role for this particular idea coincided my own interest and opened the possibility for a virtual collaboration between us. Finding the references was the first step. Next came purchasing the book - used and recycled of course - then reading the book and, finally, installing it within the exhibition with compost references marked for easy access. Forty-three novels containing the word 'compost' were displayed on a shelf adjacent to the Audio Compost Box.
The palimpsest paintings (31" x 31") are the result of painting over earlier, finished canvasses - hence palimpsest. They employ layers of transparent acrylic paint that permit echoes of previous images, colours and textures to permeate the final surface. This means that clear reading of new surface-text is compromised. As also found in some compost, traces of original ingredients often remain intact and visible.
The palimpsest paintings (31" x 31") are the result of painting over earlier, finished canvasses - hence palimpsest. They employ layers of transparent acrylic paint that permit echoes of previous images, colours and textures to permeate the final surface. This means that clear reading of new surface-text is compromised. As also found in some compost, traces of original ingredients often remain intact and visible.
The small glasses (8 1/2" x 8 1/2") have text etched, in mirror image, on the underside of the glass. Dependent upon lighting, the text projects onto a torn paper heaps the surfaces of which, are covered in beeswax. In the palimpsest paintings, words emerge from the surface while, in the glasses, words are projected and float onto the surface of the waxed-paper heap.
The Audio Compost Box (7'x7'x7'), is an enclosed space that incorporates eight small audio speakers. The enclosure is entered from the front by the viewer/listener. Each speaker delivers a different 18-23 second voice recording. Playback of each recording is triggered when circuits are tripped by interruption of laser beams projected at ankle level. Depending upon movement within the box, sounds are randomly activated and overlaid. Seven of the eight recordings are the voices of friends and relatives. Four are female and three are male. The recordings were made in Australia, Canada, England and U.S.A. Each person reads a brief passage that includes the word 'compost'. The eighth recording is me and, in the spirit of good composting practice, the contents of the audio box are intermixed to create a Compostial Cachophany.
Individual voices and the quotations can be found here.
"...Maycock's own deconstructive project relies as much on language as it does on image. Indeed the entire exhibition may be understood as an extended metaphor, both silly and serious, for the enterprise of art theory and organic composting. But which is the metaphor for which actuality?"
Susan Gibson-Garvey. Catalogue essay for bryan maycock (de)composed (August 2006)
"...Maycock's own deconstructive project relies as much on language as it does on image. Indeed the entire exhibition may be understood as an extended metaphor, both silly and serious, for the enterprise of art theory and organic composting. But which is the metaphor for which actuality?"
Susan Gibson-Garvey. Catalogue essay for bryan maycock (de)composed (August 2006)