The knowledge that we are in a climate crisis can often feel overbearing and completely unstoppable, it is hard to find a place to start and even harder to stay hopeful. The exhibition I visited inside the Midlands Arts Centre narrowed this intimidatingly broad topic down to one thing – waste. The exhibition ‘Waste Age: What Design Can Do’ is a collaboration between MAC and the Design Museum and is curated by Gemma Curtin and Justin McGuirk. They pair artifacts, video and informational pieces to encourage the viewer to re-evaluate their relationship with waste and overconsumption.

Tucked in the corner of MAC’s main building, the exhibition starts as one long corridor, painted ceiling to floor with a bright yellow background that feels distinctly artificial. As you follow the wall around, it takes you through the development of how we came to the immense scale of waste and complacency towards it as a society.

In addition to learning statistical facts about how waste contributes to climate change, I found the sociological exploration of why we create waste in the first place particularly interesting. It begins by explaining the development of our ‘throwaway culture’ and the issue of ‘planned obsolescence’. They included quotes and newspaper articles dating back to the 1960s which showed the corporate desire to constantly create new models of phones or cars in order to make the old model look worse and therefore, encourage consumers to buy a new product when their old one still works. They also highlighted how corporations ‘build to break’, as a decline in quality means that people will have to replace their items more often. Whilst the exhibition did not directly call into question the actions of specific companies, their representation of how corporations implicitly influence our buying habits, and create immense amounts of waste in order to gain a profit, was illuminating, particularly as this is often framed as a modern phenomenon, yet the exhibition displays that the creation of our wasteful culture has existed for decades.

I found the sociological exploration of why we create waste in the first place particularly interesting

 

 

The exhibition is divided into two sections across two floors of the MAC building; the harsh yellow corridor focuses on the present, and the upstairs gallery, washed in a pale pink, is a reassuring insight into the potential for a more sustainable future. On entering the gallery, I was immediately struck by the large installation of wooden clothes made to mimic designer brands, which was created by Abdulrazaq Awofeso and was inspired by clothes waste markets in Nigeria. This section of the exhibition used multimedia to show how new materials could be used to produce clothes, bricks, furniture and many other household essentials which currently make their way to landfill, with the aim of eliminating unnecessary waste. I left feeling impressed at all of the new technologies and materials that have been developed to minimise waste, yet whether they will be adopted on a large scale remained unclear.

 

Whilst the primary takeaway of the exhibition was the fairly predictable message that landfill waste is bad and sustainable materials are good, the imaginative ways that they explored the issue of waste were thought-provoking. For example, they used glass cases to display various items of waste in different thematic groupings. It initially felt odd to see mundane items such as a baby bottle or a computer mouse displayed as a museum artifact, but this absurdity helped to convey the sheer scale of material waste that each person creates throughout their life. The curators also interspersed displays of factual information with pieces of photography. The artistic presentation of unnatural features such as a landfill site full of rotary phones, a water treatment plant or an oil spill elevated the exhibition from a simply factual exploration of waste to a more emotional reflection on the consequences of climate change.

 

the imaginative ways that they explored the issue of waste were thought-provoking

 

I also appreciated how the exhibition managed to display the harm of waste and our consumerist culture without necessarily placing the blame on individual consumers. It also represented ways in which waste can be necessary; whilst plastic is enemy number one to environmentalists, they acknowledged the importance of plastic as a cheap and sterile material that is necessary in creating medical equipment or safety tools such as airbags and traffic cones.

The exhibition itself was made sustainably, with recyclable signs, chemical-free paint and repurposed materials from other projects. It is free to enter, yet they operate a ‘pay what you choose’ policy and encourage donations. Whilst the exhibition is fairly small, it is impeccably curated and will encourage you to approach your own relationship with waste in a new way, whilst also understanding the larger social and political issues which create cultures of wastefulness. I would certainly encourage a visit, especially as its run at MAC is its only tour location in the UK, so visit before 25^th February for this unique artistic and educational experience.

---

Enjoyed this? Read more from Redbrick Culture here!

The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: A Beacon of Culture reopens after a four-year renovation

Theatre Review: Rotten

Theatre Review: The Red Shoes