Worth & Weight
August 2022 @ Art Market Hamptons with VSOP Projects

In Worth & Weight, Morgan Hobbs creates a sculptural installation that depicts a site of ruins made almost entirely from recycled materials. Amazon boxes, trash bags filled with packing peanuts, toilet paper rolls, milk jugs, and plastic sheets are assembled together and coated in pulverized newspaper creating a rough, gray surface. The fossil-like forms take the shape of blocks with decorative details, fragments of statuesque figures, tools, weapons, personal items, and some of the historical signifiers and symbols that can be found around Hobbs’ home in Philadelphia, a city that is rife with history, myth, and symbolic meaning.

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In the field of archaeology, trash pits are gold mines. They’re a major source of information and discovery - a way to learn about the everyday lives of the people in a past time and place. Perhaps near an old stone foundation, a pit of pottery shards, beads, and broken mirrors suggests that the ruined structure is the remnants of a house, restaurant, or hotel. Archaeologists have the exciting task of reanimating these discarded objects to interpret their significance and their connection to written documentation and oral histories. The discarded items in Worth & Weight have been reanimated into a collection of forms that wait to be interpreted by their viewers. The arrangement of these crafted objects creates a scene that may appear to be the ruins of a post-apocalyptic cityscape or the result of the total societal collapse of western civilization. Yet from within the ashes, objects begin to speak for themselves, new stories emerge, and fresh life is given to what was left behind.