Lot 73: STUART HAYGARTH

‘TIDE’ chandelier
From the edition of ten.

210 cm (82 5/8 in) drop, 150 cm (59 in) diameter

Sourced objects, monofilament line, painted MDF.

2004

<em>Design Contre Design</em>, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2007, p. 319; Libby Sellers, <em>Why What How: Collecting Design in a Contemporary Market</em>, London, 2010, p. 101

Stuart Haygarth&#8217;s &#8216;TIDE&#8217; chandelier is constructed of
discarded desiderata, items of mass consumption now waste,
exhausted of their utilitarian value, only to arrive on the
coastline of Europe. These ersatz objects have been washed
up by the tides, then collected and archived by the artist. The
amassing of this debris is a work in progress and will continue
to be an abundant source of material so long as this mass
consumption becomes superfluous and ends up in our oceans.
However familiar the items in the chandelier may appear, they
have all in fact been stripped of their logos and branding. All
such signifiers have been drowned at sea, leaving the bare
objects to be a collection of signs that can induce nostalgia or
perplexity.

The light within the chandelier is suspended like a celestial
body holding its space debris in orbit. When the light radiates
through this sphere of man-made ocean detritus it refracts as
divinely as crystal. This merging of flotsam and jetsam into an
art work creates a new light, the beauty of which illuminates
the scale and the fragility of our oceans. As Arthur C Clarke
wrote, &#8220;How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it is
quite clearly Ocean&#8221;.