Patricia Tonner-Mintier
10-01-2021
Activists interlopers and pranksters
Due 10-06
Too Much! Overconsumption and Our Relationship to Stuff
Rabbit hole and our relationship with home
Working in the gallery I have the opportunity to be around the artwork for a good amount of time, and I find myself drawn to Robert F. Lach’s work, sitting on pedestals in the center of the room. The last two sculptures are both emerging out of a red suitcase. The first is a nest built straight through the center of the case, titled ‘rabbit hole’, the second a house with lit windows sits on top of the suitcase titled ‘housecraft II’. My first impressions on both these pieces was a tie to the phrase, “living out of your suitcase”, a term I identify with having moved fifteen times in my life. I always considered myself less materially attached since little things have a tendency to build up quickly if you may be leaving in a year or two. My mother always said we fill the spaces we occupy. I think this shows our relationship to owning things and how we surround ourselves. The image of a nest in that red suitcase was so comforting to see, the house, simplistic and glowing windows, fits perfectly atop the matching vintage suitcase. The meaning in robert lachs work maybe isn't clear under all circumstances, but when I read the artist statement, Lach himself talks of always moving around in his childhood, but in his case it made him hold onto and gather ‘discarded things’.. Either way through the artist and the viewer, you can feel a personal attachment to the concept of home and more specifically the material things we fill it with. Even our own basic human needs became filled with commercialized objects, creating a profit off of our survival. It is impossible to not be a consumer under a capitalistic society. When you can't rely on a space to hold and hide how we participate in overconsumption it can make a child aware of all the accumulation. For Lach this resulted in a need to give new life to things discarded, put to use what would just harm our planet since they have met their original function. To our society the value of our things is shifted when we deplete its function, it is re-crowned “junk”, and it can only be disposed of, making room for more things.
John Berger in ‘Ways of Seeing’ discusses the way our relationship to material things is portrayed through publicity. “Publicity principally addressed to the working class tends to promise personal transformation through the function of the particular product it's selling (Cinderella); middle class promises a transformation of relationships through a general atmosphere created by an ensemble of products ( the enchanted palace)” (pg 145). For both the enchanted palace effect, and the cinderella effect, marketing promises transformation with buying new things. This fixes the issue of people not needing a product by relying on people feeling emotionally unsatisfied, or physically unattractive, (which is a narrative that has been fed to us in order to keep us consuming the ‘fix’ being marketed to us) this can keep us overconsuming hoping to get better. So the Cinderella and enchanted palace is not just selling people comfort, it is selling people the problem first.
For many people, this can drive an interest in the natural world, to return to our basic human needs that can be resourced from a natural environment.
Rabbit hole and housecraft II both compliment each other as two home forms, one a house and the other represents the nests of the natural world, something that grabbed Lach's attention. Angry at the indifference of society to how we pollute the natural world, Robert Lach redirects that anger into creating art, “scavenging is an act of regeneration and renewal channeling anger into constructive life force turning difficulties and challenges onto something positive.”
The message of this piece comforts me, in that a home can take a nontraditional form. To be conscientious and resourceful with our materialism, we can work against our culture of overconsumption on an individual level, and as a community.
First image: ‘Rabbit Hole’ by Robert Lach
Second image: my view from the desk
Third image: ‘housecraft’ by Robert Lach
Selfie on overconsumption
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