By Neehar Mishra
Photography: Courtesy the
artist
Read Time: 2 mins
Artist Maxwell
Rushton’s unconventional and thought-provoking installation
has confronted people all over the world with a pertinent question: Would you
help or move on?
In a world,
where boundaries between commercial art and “art for art’s sake” are fading
away, UK-based artist Maxwell Rushton’s mixed medium works not only come as a
breath of fresh air, but are often utterly shocking and awe-inspiring in their
impact. Take, for instance, his artwork, ‘Buy In and Bleed Out’ in which he
took ‘mixed medium’ to a whole new level by using around 20 pints of his own
blood; or ‘Drawn Out’ for which he spent 386 days in isolation, drawing lines
on four 10m rolls of paper. His latest work, ‘Left Out’, is no different, with
the added impact of coaxing the viewers to look within and question themselves.
A few months
ago, people walking the streets of London were confronted with a strange sight
- a bin bag that looked as if a person was sitting inside it. Reactions ranged
from a passing glance to people trying to rip off the plastic to help this ‘human’,
while few others barely took notice of it. “Seeing others walk past, I hope
that frightens people. Then they can ask, ‘Who would I be?’ and go and prove to
themselves that they would be the person who cares,” says Rushton in a
documentary based on Left Out. The art here then lies in the reactions of the
passersby rather than in the object itself.
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Intended to
sensitize people about the rampant problem of homelessness in the world, the
idea of Left Out took root in Rushton’s mind last year, when he tripped over a
bin bag and spun around to apologize to it, thinking it was a homeless person.
The incident changed the way he looked at homelessness, stirring in him dread
as well as a curiosity about the perception of destitution among people in
general. Left Out, essentially a form of a hunched human figure wrapped inside
a bin bag, has been displayed twice on the streets of London, but has evoked a
wide range of reactions from people all over the world, with its video
garnering more than 10 million views. According to the artist, a particularly
interesting insight came from a gentleman in London, who interpreted it as a
symbol of how human beings are disposable. An unfortunate but introspective
observation!
This work shocked me with the incite it displays of the reality of how the homeless are viewed by the majority of the population in this world. Being homeless once my self I know this first hand. You feel discarded unloved not cared about worthless and forgotten. I never thought it could happen to me but it did. Pray it never happens to you. But I found there are people who do care and there is hope that things and attitudes will change for the better. People have got to care about each other more then they do about possessions status and money.
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