It would be interesting to know whether Terry Summers has read Liquid Modernity and Wasted Lives. Modern consumptive society is well questioned by Summers' latest installation, which only recently (Aug 2011) vacated St John's Cathedral in Brisbane, Australia. By transforming recycled cardboard into works of art Summers has used the medium (waste cardboard) to carry the message about caring for the environment through recycling. He has called the collection "Guardians of the Environment”.
Summers Semiotica: Waiting Room 2001
Although Summers lives and creates his innovative sculptural installations in Brisbane, Australia; he was born in England and migrated to Australia in 1962. He seems to acknowledge that his migration was much easier for him than the displacement and fractured existence of those who are not so lucky worldwide.
In 2002 he created a stunning installation called "Waiting" designed to protest against the Federal Government's treatment of asylum seekers by using waste to signify the wastedness of these heartlessly abandoned and negated peoples. He did this by creating 40 standing figures inside a chain wire compound, which of course bore a crown of barbed wire.
Summers' symbolism is clever and disturbing. Skilfully playing with words, the artist manipulated the conjured scene to fashion a piece called "Waiting Room" wherein 40 inverted hanging figures hang "Waiting to be Processed".
The work becomes all the more disturbing when consumers realise that the life sized figures in a range of ages from adult through to infant are masked with black cards over their eyes. This symbolic trickery conjures many associations from trivialising masquerade through to a more sinister media obfuscation of those whose identity must not to be revealed.
Condemned to Responsibility
Australians must feel many emotions when they view these compelling environmental pieces. One presumes they would range from indifference through to guilt or a deep sense of panic as audiences decode Summers' not so subtle messages.
The black strips suggest that Australians (God Bless Them!) should be saved from looking into the eyes of those we declare as superfluous. On a second longer lingering visual sweep, one asks, do the strips really prevent either the viewer or the viewed from recognising the guilt, shame and embarrassment implied by their presence?
God Bless Australia …..Less We Protest
Is the subtlety that is so artfully manipulated by Summers all the more like a sledge hammer due to its vague suggestive nature? Some of the figures have a subtle cardboard strip adhered to the mouth with the implied meaning ever the more amplified by simulated stitches screaming at us silently. They remind Australians painfully of the time when detainees stitched their lips together. Their "mistake made" is ever the more embarrassing that they could think that this activist gesture would be enough to dredge a response from an unhearing government.
It is a strange and curious situation when a nationally treasured sculptor such as Terry Summers wins people choice awards and other enduring accolades. Clearly Australian people do know what is going on with regards the refugee situation in Australia and they do understand and wish for a more peaceful and just solution to a global problem. After winning the Griffith Award for Academic Excellence for previous work, these installations were entered into and exhibited in the National Sculpture Prize in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.(2002)
"The installation as a whole was intended to give a feeling of the hopelessness of the situation for a group of persecuted people from a different culture, vainly asking for help, and the treatment that they have received from the government of a more affluent society." (Summers)
The Impact of the Work of Terry Summers
How then are we Australians to proceed? It is the seductive nature of large installations such as these that people can walk around them. They can look at the intended and their own interpreted message from many angles. Walking around the figures takes time, and within the time it takes to amble about the pathetic looking figures, one is able to ponder on what it might feel like to wait to be processed in such a fashion. One is caused to ask - what if it was me?
Resources:
- Bauman, Z. (2000a). Liquid Modernity: Polity Press.
- Bauman, Z. (2000b). Social Issues of Law and order. British Journal of Crimonology, 4, 200-221.
- Bauman, Z. (2003). City of Fears, City of Hopes. London: Goldsmiths College, University of London.
- Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted Lives Modernity and Its Outcasts: Cambridge press : polity.
- Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid Times Living in an Age of Uncertainty
- Christmas gift with an environmental message. Through the work of Summers, teachers and parents give themselves the opportunity to raise environmental consciousness by asking “What is this Kingdom that we have been tasked to look after?”
- Summers,T. Image Gallery
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