Expensive Rubbish Aroha Novak & Elise O'Neill

For Expensive Rubbish Elise O'Neil and Aroha Novak present handmade military and consumer items which have been constructed from recycled materials; they take issue with these products which feed off capitalist narratives of fear and desire. Underlying their work is a critique of consumer fetishism and media sensation which negates, obscures and denies the socially and environmentally destructive forces at play behind these systems. O'Neil's oversized home appliances, handmade from recycled cardboard and newspaper, invert the throw-away mentality of consumer culture and Novak's child-size military vehicles allude to the way war is fantasised, flattened and re-packaged through media depictions. 

Click to download the exhibition text (PDF)

Presented alongside Elspeth Fougere Here, There and Everywhere (We are a Community of Cells). Using handmade and recycling methods O'Neill, Novak and Fougere are part of an international resurgence of a craft and do-it-yourself ethos, which has grown in response to current economic and environmental conditions.