Stuart Haygarth

'Drop' chandelier, 2011

Footnotes

Provenance
Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2015

Stuart Haygarth's 'Drop' chandelier was first produced for a performance during Design Miami, 2007 and is constructed of discarded desiderata. These items of mass consumption now waste, all exhausted of their utilitarian value were collected from Stansted Airport, London, after being left behind at airport security. These ersatz objects, if not collected, would have most likely ended up in a landfill. The amassing of this debris may always be a work in progress and unfortunately will continue to be an abundant source of material, so long as mass consumption remains superfluous. However familiar the items in the chandelier may appear, they have all in fact been stripped of their logos and branding. All such signifiers have been removed, leaving the bare objects to be a collection of signs that can induce nostalgia or perplexity. The light within the chandelier is suspended like a celestial body holding its space-like debris in orbit. When the light radiates through this sphere of man-made ocean detritus it refracts as divinely as crystal. This merging of potential flotsam and jetsam into an artwork creates a new light, the beauty of which illuminates the scale and the fragility of our environment and oceans. As Arthur C Clarke wrote, "How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is quite clearly Ocean".