found objects

Posts tagged
with found objects

Design History

Meticulous Flat Lays of Vintage Toys and Miniatures Celebrate the History of Play and Design

“There’s a feeling I remember which has to do with the seriousness of play, when you were completely absorbed in playing a game with your toys and fully believed in the world you’d created, and it really mattered,” Jane Housham says. “I look longingly back at that imaginative space.”

A writer, artist, and self-described accumulator, Housham continually returns to the engrossing joys of childhood through a vast collection of found objects. Stickers and plastic doll hands, a pantry of non-perishable goods, and a menagerie of animals on wheels are the catalysts for her flat lays. Precisely categorized by color, shape, or theme, each composition highlights the varied styles, functions, and contexts of similar items and becomes a useful and approachable entry into the history of design. “If I’ve acquired a new (to me) little object, that often nudges me to revisit the category it belongs to—a new tiny seahorse or radio will subtly alter the pre-existing set, and the arrangement is always fresh in any case. Seahorses and radios are particular favourites of mine,” she says.

 

Housham’s mother was a dollhouse enthusiast and passed on her love of miniatures, which inspired the artist to keep a box of treasures as a child that she would frequently sort and arrange. That early experience is the root of her current practice, which is the result of rummaging through massive stores—she estimates there are thousands of objects in her possession at the moment—of vintage toys and tiny items.

Because many of the pieces in her collection are antiques and sourced secondhand, sometimes they’re rusty, scratched, or broken, and a considerable number are made from plastic. Housham adds:

I’m not really interested in new plastic things as I don’t want to encourage the continued spewing out of unnecessary plastic bits and pieces, but I like to save old plastic toys and other secondhand bits and bobs and to celebrate their colours and the ingenuity of their design. Although it’s now understood to be so bad for the world, plastic was a beautiful material in its heyday.

Housham shares a trove of miniature finds and color-coded compositions on her Instagram, Found and Chosen, and sells prints of the flat lays on Etsy. As she amasses more objects and engages with the childhood curiosity and imagination she so deeply values, she does find herself asking one recurring question: “Where will all this collecting end, I wonder?”

 

Art

Expressive Eyes Painted by Robyn Rich Peek Out from Vintage Tins

What does it mean to see? To be seen? Artist Robyn Rich (previously) examines these questions in her practice as she paints realistic eyes that peer out from vintage tins and small vessels. The tiny works harness physical particularities to relay the emotions and idiosyncrasies of the subject, whether through thick brows, wrinkles, or mascaraed lashes that frame the delicate organs. Intimate and unsettling when displayed in large collections, the miniature pieces explore various aspects of the gaze and perspective and ask who is watching whom.

Rich’s solo show Optics is on view through December 23 at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne. Find more of her work on Instagram.

 

Art History

Art Without Intent Celebrates the Aesthetics and Mysterious Histories of Found Objects

“The found object is an illegible, unknowable thing, out of reach even when in hand,” reads a statement of Art Without Intent, both a collaborative project and a way of looking at historic material culture. In March 2022, a group of nine antique and art dealers curated the Found Object Show in New York City. Crackled paint, weathered patinas, eccentric shapes, and amusing juxtapositions characterized the pop-up exhibition of 96 eccentric items.

Removed from their original contexts, transformed by time and the elements, and reinterpreted in a salon-style exhibition, the objects transmit an aesthetic experience similar to viewing art, even if the anonymous makers did not intend to create artworks in any formal sense. “Transformed physically and contextually, a found object sometimes packs the same aesthetic and conceptual punch of conventional art. But without artistic motive nor objective meaning, it must lie in wait to ambush an imagination,” the group explains.

Accessibility is a unique facet of the show, which invites dedicated collectors, history buffs, curious passersby, and children into the showcase, in which all objects are available for sale in a unique art-gallery-meets-antique shop atmosphere. “Art without intent ennobles the random, celebrates the anonymous, and embraces the subjective, empowering individuals to see art where they may least expect to find it.”

The next Found Objects Show will feature eighteen exhibitors and is scheduled for March 24 to 26 with an additional focus on stuffed animals. You can find out more about the project, purchase a catalogue on the website, and follow updates Instagram. (via BoingBoing)

 

Art

From Jenga Blocks to Peanuts, Artist Oli Watt Hatches 101 Duck Decoys Using Found Objects

During a residency at the home of the late artist Roger Brown, Oli Watt was intrigued by the Chicago Imagist’s duck decoys. An avid collector, Brown cultivated numerous groups of objects and approached the items lining his shelves democratically, seeing all, no matter their cultural or monetary value, as of equal importance. Watt’s encounter with these quotidian trapping devices prompted a similarly impartial project with 101 Decoys, a series of sculptures that explores the relationship between form and function.

The Chicago-based artist, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute where Brown’s collections are housed, uses a range of found materials to construct his flock of waterfowl, from stacked Jenga blocks and pink, plush fabric to wine corks and a Bosch drill battery. Often structured around a wooden base, the final works vary in size and shape and are eclectic, lighthearted interpretations of hunting decoys. Departing from the object’s practical and historical uses, Watt describes his “useless” works as “an exercise in understanding, utilizing, and undermining repetition.”

A selection of 101 Decoys will be on view at Carrie Secrist Gallery from November 4 to December 17. You can find more of the sculptural fowl on the project’s site and Watt’s Instagram.

 

Art Design Photography

In Bold Self-Portraits, Fantastical Masks Camouflage Noah Harders in Flora and Fauna

Native Hawaiian artist Noah Harders takes a whimsical approach to style in Moemoeā, his first institutional exhibition opening next week at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Translating to dream or fantasy, the show’s title offers a conceptual, political, and aesthetic foundation for Harders’ vast array of works that transform crustacean shells, skeletal remains, lush jade flowers, and other organic matter into sculptural wearables. The fashions are intricately constructed and mask most of the artist’s face as he captures their sprawling forms through bold self-portraiture, which he describes as fostering a connection between himself and the found objects. He explains:

When I put on these masks, I feel like I am embodying the spirit and essence of seemingly ordinary materials that can be found around us…These pieces are a way for us to step out of the harsh reality we are consumed by every day and simply have a moment to dream and feel inspired by what surrounds us on this earth.

Moemoeā runs from November 3, 2022, to July 23, 2023. Dive into Harders’ extensive archive of headdresses on his site and Instagram.

 

Art

Vintage Baubles and Foliage Encircle the Enchanting Glass Dioramas of Artist Amber Cowan

In her solo show Gathering the Sky, Mining the Milk, Amber Cowan emphasizes the legacy of color. Through intricately layered dioramas of pressed glass, the Philadelphia-based artist explores the histories of lavender, jade, and opaque white. Her assemblages meld custom and found pieces sourced from primarily defunct factories in the United States, many of which produced a specific palette of colors like the sky blue of “Ecco to the Bridesmaid: ‘I Know Not What Has Happened to Your Pod.” Comprised of two symmetrically shaped panels, the diptych blends an array of materials and generational references, including the 1992 Sega video game Ecco the Dolphin and the emblem of Louis Comfort Tiffany, the artist behind the iconic opalescent stained glass lamps.

Similar to Cowan’s earlier works, these new reliefs are brimming with foliage, flowers, and small baubles that encircle a scenic component embedded in the center. Figurative statues like the artist’s recurring bridesmaid character, miniature bird sculptures, chalices, and Greco-style columns infuse the pieces with narrative detail.

Gathering the Sky, Mining the Milk is on view through November 19 at Heller Gallery in New York. Find more of Cowan’s work on Instagram.