Art at the Dump: Twenty Years of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology

If one is expecting work like that of such garbage aesthetes as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque (collage cubism), Joseph Cornell (box constructions), or Robert Rauschenberg (combines/assemblage), it will not be found at Art at the Dump, currently on view at Intersection 5M. We are long past the intrusion of life and material culture into art; it’s neither new nor shocking. However, there are still elements of the resurrection of “dead matter,” the materiality of found objects, and the depiction of the abject. But garbage is now taking on a new urgency, what with global warming and the Pacific Trash Vortex and other piles of waste brought on by a burgeoning world population and overconsumption in the Western world. The stakes are decidedly higher.

There are over fifty artists in this exhibition, constituting a mere sampling of the work currently in the collection of Recology San Francisco, where these artists participated in an artist-in-residence program now in its twentieth year. Limited to a four-month period, spent either full- or part-time, artists are required to restrict their materials to what they find at the dump, an area where individuals and private haulers bring their goods. Although this program was originally conceived to teach people about recycling, the works in this exhibition do not preach, but show by example. Think adaptive re-use.

The works I found most intriguing transcended mere materiality and raised larger questions of the “overconsumption” of experiences, including education and tourism and their detritus. One work by Nomi Talisman is a greatly enlarged digital print of a found slide from 1962. It not only pictures tourists lounging by a pool (reminiscent of work by Larry Sultan), but also includes the slide mount with 

Nomi Talisman. Hotel Tamanaco (Where I'm Calling from), 2005; archival digital print; 24 x 23.8 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Recology San Francisco.

the upside-down inscription, “Swimming Pool at Hotel Tamanaco Caracas Venezuela.” Vacation slides! There must be millions out there from the pre-digital universe, but why were they created and where do they reside after owners’ deaths? In a culture that is increasingly concerned with people’s histories (no more master narratives) and tourism (a new and old economic engine), there should be a national depository for vacation slides, family photos, journals, and diaries. Dee Hibbert-Jones’ Burden of Nostalgia (2002), a suitcase filled with ephemera including a notebook marked “Mission High,” raises these same issues.

Art at the Dump: Twenty Years of the Artist in Residence Program at Recology is on view at Intersection 5M, in San Francisco, through October 2, 2010.

Allegra Fortunati holds graduate degrees in Political Science and Art History. She lives and works in San Francisco as a freelance writer for several publications, both local and national.