Looking at artists who use recycled everyday items:

Hosmer, Katie. “Colourful Wall of Crocheted Everyday Items”. My Modern Metropolis, blog. May 11, 2012. Accessed June 7, 2013. http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/anu-tuominen-crocheted-potholders

"Colourful Wall of Crocheted Everyday Items"

This colorful installation is a collection of crocheted potholders by artist Anu Tuominen. In much of her work, the Finland-based artist redefines the function of basic, everyday stuff. She finds neglected and unloved goods, and by reworking these things, she gives them new life as conceptual art.

As a collection, this crotched wool, formed into a colorful pattern of basic household potholders, functions as a strong visual language. In a review of her work, Ostso Kantokorpi says, “Tuominen’s works present an endless array of parallels, analogies, continuums and hierarchies. She transposes the image into words and the word into images, the public into things private, and the private into the public.”

Tuominen looks at the world with an open mind. She sees the beauty in what others would see as trash. Through this visual attention to the world, Tuominen is able to demonstrate the importance of innovation, even through the smallest item like a piece of wool. She says, “Everything is still as it was, and yet somehow more meaningful than before.”

 

 - I am very interested particularly in the idea of paying attention to small everydya things in the world and bringing them into conversation with the viewer, for their purpose and references to be considered, and their importance and authority as 'art' to be questioned

 - I am not concerned whether as an aritst I give the objects I have chosen a new specific meaning, I am more concerned witht he idea of bringing mundane objects into view and contemplating their ability to be or reference something beyond what their origional everyday purpose grounds and limits them as.

 - reassessing the everyday

 - the world is there to be engaged with

 - rehabilitation

 - process - mindless, labour, time

 - creates a conversation between the two - the original constructor and me the de-constructor and then reconstructor.

 - investment of labour into something adds value...something grander than it is in the sense of value...

 - it adds value when it makes connections with something else beyond it..

 

 

 

 

Anu Tuominen, "Colourful Wall of Crocheted Everyday Items," household pot holders