joseph weidenbaum visual artist

I find discarded things.

Things people have sold, lost, forgotten, or merely handed on. Disused objects, personal belongings, suitcases & trunks that have travelled around the globe. Ex military surplus, building materials. Wall paper, copper wire, electrical components as well as traditional art materials, paints, shellacs, bitumen and ephemera. I take things apart making a wreckage of history's own wreckage.

This way of making art is not just to explore what has been lost to history, but also to explore what we might find. Uncovered names and addresses, curious scratches, stains and surfaces become the things I can appropriate, re-use and make art with.

"Western culture has embedded stories of migration, appropriation, and loss, we might imagine ourselves as a nation in isolation, but we share a global history through the many journeys we took to the present day. We share history, but we are also very different, coming together in local communities and building new spaces and relationships like a bricolage. In this way, my artworks or wreckages are not necessarily destructive, they are also about the people we find and sustain.