Hong Hao My things No. 5 - 5000 Pieces of Rubbish in 2002

NARRATOR:
In this work, thousands of everyday objects are squeezed into a frame to mimic a celestial landscape.

Over a period of twelve years, artist Hong Hao made a habit of saving the things he consumed every day. He picked out bits and pieces of the items that looked trivial and produced monotonous images by placing the items directly on a flatbed scanner and scanning the bottoms of them one by one. The results are images showing the true details of items like bottle caps, empty cans, and other objects, making the work much more objective than conventional photography. Hong Hao then organised the images according to the colours and shapes of the scanned items to create a huge photographic collage.

This work is a record of the artist’s consumption behaviour and living conditions as much as it’s an exhibit of the impact of consumerism. The society keeps on changing, and every day we find more and more new products replacing the old ones in the consumer market. While globalisation has blurred boundaries between nations, allowing people living in different parts of the world to easily access similar or even the exact same products, the idea of materialism has also spread across the globe, drowning us in insatiable desires to buy more and more.

As you look at the objects in the image again, how might it make you reflect on your relationship with objects you own?

NARRATOR:

My things No. 5 - 5000 Pieces of Rubbish in 2002 is a photographic work created by Hong Hao between 2001 and 2002. This chromogenic print measures 120 centimetres high and about 210 centimetres wide; when framed, the print is surrounded by a white border that is roughly three centimetres wide on each side. The picture appears to be a showcase of over 5,000 used everyday objects photographed from a bird’s eye view.

Filling up the entire image, these everyday objects of varying shapes, sizes, and colours stand out against a completely dark background. Some of them can be identified more easily as they either have a bright colour, have words printed on them, or are uniquely shaped. The rest, however, are more likely to blend in. In terms of overall appearance, the objects are grouped by shape: circles, strips, quadrangles, triangles, and other irregular shapes.

The circular objects mostly occupy the centre of the picture. The larger circles are on the centre-right, while the smaller ones extend from the lower centre to the centre-left. These round objects range from a soft drink can, a sink strainer, an unpeeled garlic bulb, and a slice of lemon to a ten-cent Hong Kong dollar coin, a one-yuan renminbi coin, and a collection of colourful buttons.

The strip-shaped objects, some longer some shorter, are arranged in rows along the bottom of the picture but are more concentrated in the lower left-hand corner. They include a pill carton, an ointment stick, a plastic lighter, a twisted cigarette butt, a glue stick, a silver-coloured metal door hinge, a nail clipper, a white plastic fork, and a green dart. Among these household items, pieces of fusilli pasta and bits of bones from meat or fish can also be seen.

The quadrangular objects are concentrated in the top right-hand corner. They include a small butter tub, the cardboard packaging of medicated oil, a roll of film and its packaging, and a blister pack of pills.

Triangular or irregular objects are interspersed among the other items, filling up the spaces that are left. Examples include a binder clip, a razor blade, shreds of paper with words on them, shreds of portrait photos, corn kernels, whole lotus seeds, dried shrimp, garlic peels, and the ring pulls of soft drink cans.