Carley Hodgkinson and LeeAndra Cianci believe one artist’s trash is another artist’s treasure. Their one day only exhibit at the Dawson Printshop (Monday, March 5, 5:30pm), La Belle Poubelle is a “take on a pop-up store—in fact, a pop-up garbage dump,” says Hodgkinson. “We wanted to borrow the language of a more conventional pop-up store, very white and modern and clean, but using packaged garbage as our merchandise.”
And like any good pop-up store, you don’t have to leave empty handed. “Our packaged garbage is available for exchange and it is in the exchange that the fun of this installation really takes form,” says Cianci.
Hodgkinson and Cianci are Master of Design students at NSCAD and came up with the idea in order to skew common tropes in pop culture. “We like the idea of doing something that’s a little bit unsettling,” says Cianci. “A little bit fun and a little bit beautiful.”
They have created a QR campaign to gather photos and comments about memorable garbage—for instance, that glow in the dark rubber bat you found on the sidewalk that time. Any submissions can be directed to Twitter or Tumblr.
The two hope La Belle Poubelle questions the “nature and exchange value of something as mundane and loaded as garbage,” says Hodgkinson. “Creating a scenario in which garbage is looked at differently, as something collectible, as something that records memory or experience, and that provokes discussion.”
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2012.
