Using Solid Waste to make Art and Architecture in Toronto
Smelly, solid waste sometimes gets a bad name. For a lot of Torontonians, they just want their waste picked up and hauled off. They just need it out of the house and out of the way. As a part of the City of Toronto’s ongoing commitment to reducing waste consumption in the GTA, they’ve invited the first ever artists-in-residence to their solid waste service.
Sean Martindale and JP King are teaming together to create art and architecture from Toronto waste. Admittedly a challenging task, the results have proven to be rather tremendous and demonstrates the need to confront the growing waste problem. This initiative ultimately hopes to inspire and promote Toronto’s 70-percent waste diversion goal.
The duo’s exhibition Our Desires Fail Us will be available for view at the Harbourfront Centre for the remainder of August and until mid-September. To create the artwork on display, Martindale and King visited some of Toronto’s smelliest waste sites seeking out materials. Speaking to CBC Radio earlier this month, the waste management facility the team worked with they perhaps-affectionately call “hands down the most disgusting place we’ve ever been… mountains of poopy bags and oozing liquid, and just the most rancid smell, maggots crawling all over things.”
Among the approaches taken to create art from waste, the duo took photographs and used a mirroring technique to highlight the symmetry in image. By applying symmetry to these waste photographs, the art begins to reveal unique architectures, builds, and even faces at times. As disgusting as it may have been to sort through, there’s no question that Martindale and King were able to turn it into something truly beautiful that draws the artful eye in. If you’re able to make it down to the Harbourfront Center before mid-September, we strongly recommend checking out the work of these amazing artists.
These photographs highlight a difficult relationship Toronto has with waste. The GTA is a region of over six million people – the City of Toronto alone carries about half of that. The residential and commercial spaces that Toronto is comprised of produces a significant amount of waste. Just taking a walk down some of the more residential neighborhoods, there’s no telling what one might find sitting out at the curb. The City is really producing more waste than it knows what to do with, as much of our waste which could otherwise be composted or reused gets sent off to a local landfill. Although Toronto has some pretty big goals for a future of limited waste, in today’s landscape, it’s sometimes hard to see how it plans to achieve that. It’s our hope that more initiatives like these artists-in-residence programs can help shine a light on the issue of waste management in urban centres.
Waste is something easily hidden, despite posing such an immense problem to our social and environmental ecosystems. Just because something is thrown out and sent to the curb does not mean that it’s going to end up in the right place. Confronting the fact that there’s a strong need for waste management change in Toronto is the first step. The next is in setting into place the needed infrastructure to maximize waste diversion and increase recycling operations.
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If you own a residential or commercial property in Toronto and are seeking waste management, recycling, junk removal, dumpster rental, or waste pick-up, please speak with a representative at Core Mini Bins today.
