SURPLUS - Ben Cain

These signs, and the found cardboard they're written on want a social body. They want to communicate, but not very clearly. They consider the uses of public space and want to act as a sort of social media. They refer to production, over-production, and the 'too-much' that is Surplus. 

This 'too much' sits beside -but not very comfortably- an irresistible drive to work, to make things and do things, all the time. These cardboard signs are conceived as a sort of extra-or para-production, in addition and in the sidelines of other work that I'm making, and for most of the time I didn’t think of them as art-work at all.

The cardboard (from flat screens, fridges etc) is found on the streets in the neighbourhood, then altered, then returned to the street before being recycled or taken. It’s a cyclical process that began in Covid when I needed to somehow take part in public life, somewhat remotely and temporarily. It’s a sort of semi- almost non-public public activity that took place intermittently, sometimes even a few times a week, for a few years; and this book includes some of that work. It’s still ongoing, but the need is less acute. 

The human fallout and general expense of work done in excess of the bare cost of labour itself (i.e. profit) is part of Surplus, but there's also an interest in the types of self-directed non-profit work that might be closer to Leisure than to Work.

Along with the association with Profit, the nonessential nature of 'Surplus-ness' also offers room in the margins for making that's not bound to purposefulness and the necessary, but rather to speculation and intentional aimlessness.

This is production, but hopefully production of exchange, discussion, thinking aloud, social space rather than profit and sensible means-to-ends usefulness.

Ben Cain, 2026
Softcover
160 x 120mm