Joe Riley

Into the ground: Rust dye workshops and corrosion conversations

“Into the ground” is a site-specific installation, field-work, and public programming, which draws on the Socrates Sculpture Park’s history as an unregulated landfill, the flow of the river along its bank, and the visibility and invisibility of waste streams. The rust-dyed exterior of the sculpture was composed through a series of public artist-led workshops. These gatherings were collective examinations of the ground during which participants excavated discarded, lost, and found iron objects from the park. The communal rust-dyes produced an abstracted inprint of discarded material: describing practices of use, abandonment, and alchemical transformations over time.

Taking as our central concern a collective examination of the ground these public workshops invite participants to dye canvas material with discarded, lost and found iron objects. Excavated from the waste streams and residues of the city, we will arrange these rusty objects to collectively produce a semipermanent and volatile iron oxide dyed image.

The aim of these workshops project is not only to produce a textile, but to encourage the possibility of fundamental insight into an issue at hand. The covered car is not a comprehensive history or complete document of toxicity. Rather, the work is to excite, together, the residue of the past as a way to exchange our experiences and signal our existence.