Susan Stockwell’s Recycled Art Gallery

Have you been wondering what to do with your old computer parts, electronics, or other recyclables? If so, you could learn from Susan Stockwell and create something amazing. Stockwell is a world renowned artist that has had exhibits in galleries and museums all over the world. Places like The National Museum of China in Beijing, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and The Katonah Museum of Art in America.

Susan Stockwell’s Recycled Art Gallery leaves society with much to reflect on. The above photo, Flood, was displayed in New York’s St Marys’ a deconsecrated 13th century church and was comprised entirely of recycled computer components; four tons worth! “The computers were dissected, their innards exposed, revealing the underbelly of the machines we take for granted, an autopsy of our consumer society.”

Stockwell chooses to borrow the materials for her large scale projects and then returns them once the exhibit is over. “She chooses these ‘commodity’ materials because, in her words, they contain ‘stains of existence’ and act as ready-made signifiers which she can sculpt and interweave in ways that delicately reveal their obscured politics and hidden beauty.”

Susan’s recent commission from Bedfordshire University is complete and installed in the atrium of the new student building on their Central Luton site. The piece World is based on a world map and made from recycled computer components supplied by the company Secure IT Recycling.

The Curator Grace Chung describes the works gently revealing nature – ‘Accumulation, transformation, detritus, debris, everyday materials are all recurrent themes in Stockwell’s work. Meticulously hand crafted, the benign sublime beauty in the work belies the devastating effects of our culture and our role in shaping it. Look more closely, and one is confronted by a cultural urgency of global-proportions. Political and cultural colonization, globalize waste and consumption are reconfigured by Stockwell’s work into a new festering eco system of meaning that slowly seeps like the rising ocean level.’

To learn more about Susan and her amazing artwork go to Susanstockwell.co.uk.