Holly Alana Jackson

Entangled in consumption and production, especially as a maker of things and ideas, I challenge the absurdity of needless utility, symptomatic of material culture and the socio-economic negligence it warrants. Juxtaposing consumption for consumption’s sake; personal material surplus utilisation for ecological imperatives and simplistic production that focuses on usage in actuality. Concentrating parsimoniously on use naturally produced by-products; joyfully unimposing artefacts evidencing the nonsensical paradigms of utilisation that highlights the surging crisis of mass consumption, profligate use and the instabilities of global industrialisation, synthetic obsolescence and exponential commerce. Manifesting a distinct genre that fundamentally shirks purchasing, opting to create via availability; Aesthetic Frugality, revolutionises and communicates the defining practical elements that underpin the ethos to reducing buying, to promote a sustainability within art practice and material manufacture, exploitation and waste. The practice demands social engagement, taking the form of an inaugural national tour to evidence the practicalities, possibilities and necessities of reducing consumption for personal, social, economic and ecological stability. By embarking on a nomadic lifestyle, I can investigate how far I can limit my ownership, reduce my consumption and ultimately my physical detriment to ecology. The journey will personally develop my comprehension of the extremities of superfluous and essential items I need to own for a comfortable existence and enable me to reflect on the process whilst jettisoning my surplus. The Aesthetic Frugality movement, which I am pioneering, is driven to understand the bioeconomic and psychosocial relationship between consumption, material culture and ownership whilst demonstrating the possibility for both artists as makers and civilians to become conscious to what they own, and what owns them. Lastly, but most importantly, the practice demands social engagement in the form of conversations. To address the need for my research to reach my audience I will instigate talks, lectures and civil gatherings to exhibit what I am doing and why I am doing it, to the general public as well as others in the arts community.