Shitty Art

Santiago Sierra, an artist whose works make use of pollution and toxic materials, has a new show featuring megaliths of human excrement


Elena Crippa, the curator of the London gallery displaying the works, said Sierra’s intention is to confront audiences with the horror faced by scavengers, the so-called untouchables who traditionally clean private toilets and outhouses in India.

The Chicago Sun Times comments:

Art from excrement has a long pedigree. In 1961, Italian Piero Manzoni produced 90 cans of ‘‘Artist’s (Poo),’’ each labeled as containing one ounce of ‘‘freshly preserved’’ material. In 1999, British artist Chris Ofili’s rendition of the Virgin Mary on a canvas spattered with elephant dung brought protest when it went on display with other sensational works at The Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York.

Sierra’s work is on a different scale. His 21 dark, crackled (and odorless) monuments are lined up like headstones. Although their power seems muted in the gallery’s harsh white space, visitors interviewed still seemed impressed, if not exactly shocked, by his choice of material.

Self Exposure Grocery Bag

Here (pictured on the right, above) is a convenience for frequent flyers: a see-through tote for your see-through vials and bottles.

And here (left, above) is another new tote trend: Trend Hunter Magazine has seen Anya Hindmarch’s fashionable "I am Not a Plastic Bag" tote bag worn over the shoulders of celebrity fashionists who are simultaneously carrying loads of plastic bags in hand. Seeing that these celebrities don't "get it," Marissa V. has created a counter-tote with the words "I am not a Smug Twat".

Plastic Eating Worms

Lug worms, a favorite of anglers and fish, are bottom feeders, eating the platics that break down on the ocean floor.

Since lugworms are sediment-feeders and low in the food chain, the contaminants will be concentrated when the worms are eaten by fish and crabs.

Emma Teuten at the University of Plymouth, UK, according to The New Scientist, has demonstrated in the lab that grains of plastic are much better than grains of sand or silt at adsorbing the common pollutant phenanthrene from water. Phenanthrene belongs to a family of hydrocarbons linked with cancers and respiratory problems, and plastic particles soak up 1000 times more of it than natural ones. "They kind of mop it up out of seawater like a sponge," says Teuten.