Peter Nicholls

Rubbishlegium –Lost Paradise. 2020-The Rubbishlegium- Lost Paradise, 2014 [From the series: Semi-Fictional Photographs] Synced 36-channel video, Retired computer lab, 1800 digital photographs

The 2020 Rubbishlegium consists of 34 of the original 74 computer components, Discarded computers from the Otago Polytechnic e-waste program, deprogrammed and re-booted to hold a collection of rubbish images in a digital format. The Rubbishlegium consists of 1,800 images, semi fictional photographs. Compiled into a stop motion video.

The Rubbishlegium - Lost Paradise speaks about climate change and the role of the artist in communicating subsequent environmental and social issues The collected detritus response to this anthropocene we live in, and human condition of collecting ‘stuff’ (a segway into colonialism) the packaging, the objects, the plastic the rubbish has grown.

Rubbishlegium references the Cooks/Banks Florilegium, Which was collected by a team of Artist, Botanist, on board the HM Bark Endeavour voyage of enlightenment in 1769, which visited Aotearoa shores in its search for Terra Santa Australias. Taking back to England a trove of botanical treasure Taonga which became the founding collections for many substantial collector’s for example, the British Museum, the British Library, the Oxford University Collection, Kew and Natural History Museum and a considerable amount of private collections.

Recycle, reuse and reduce was a mantra of the last few decades. We now have human rubbish, as a traded commodity. We need energy to power this global rubbish trade, the search for energy is acknowledged in the dying wherring computers, a secular economy of waste.

To put into context the vibrant colour images which make up the Rubbishlegium. LED’s are used as the light source. These photographic studio ‘still life’ of collected rubbish, sans smell, sans grime are patted into a uniformity, although they vary from one family’s rubbish for a month, to travel lists from imagined journeys, and even the reproduction of Colin McCahon’s image ‘The Promised Land’ on a 1995 Te Papa Calendar. The psychedelic colour unifies the many images and creates multitudes of 2D utopian spaces.

Together these light works are designed to indicate a troubled sense of Beauty in Paradise and offer possibilities of reinventing a dystopian landscape.