Think twice before flushing your number two down the loo. These are hard times (economically that is) and as an artist what passes through your behind may be your salvation.
In 1961, the Italian artist Piero Manzoni did more than fling a pot of paint. He offered art-buyers 90 tins of his own excrement, at a price equal to their weight in gold. The Tate shelled out £22,300 for one in 2000, and recently another went for £84,000 at auction in Milan.
If you need further encouragement to use your excrement as a medium of expression, then you need look no further than the work of Spanish artist Santiago Sierra and Cuban artist Grethell Rasua. In 2007, Sierra exhibited in the London Lisson Gallery 21 huge blocks made of excrement gathered in the Indian cities of Delhi and Jaipur, in an effort to raise awareness on the situation of the “untouchables”, an Indian caste that has traditionally cleaned the bathrooms and latrines of the country. Grethell, however is moved by other aesthetic ideas, using the excrements of the people who commission her works of art, making use of its qualities of colour, texture and form. In many cases she uses it without disguising or isolating it, or hiding it behind other materials, as US sculptor Daniel Edwards did with his famous “Suri’s Bronzed Baby Poop” (2006), a bronze sculpture that supposedly contained the first bowel movement of the baby of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
If like me you now feel inspired to give it try but not sure if your ‘jobby’ is up to the job or not, then you may at this point wish to consider seeking the advice of renowned Scottish poo analyst Gillian McKeith, former telivision host of the UK Channel 4's You Are What You Eat.
