Musings on Rubbish

I have found myself musing on the nature of rubbish. I mean what is rubbish? The detritus left in the wake of human living perhaps? In the course of my collecting as I last posted, I have been picking up little pieces of rusted metal, glass and plastic. And these objects or fragments have an undeniable aesthetic appeal, a creative collagistic, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic potential. Would you class it then as higher order rubbish? Because there is no way I am going to start picking up really nasty things with food smearings, used tissues, cigarette butts, condoms and so on. One could form an exhaustive list of the disgusting. But the unaesthetic should get a mention here too. I mean a charmingly rusted bolt, now that's a good find, but an old yoghurt tub? I think not. So in fact I am a rubbish snob. A trash aesthete. A garbage elitist. A connoisseur of the gutter. Therein lies the dilemma. Because as I mentioned before there is just no way I am picking up the nasty stuff, yet if artists using found objects seek to make a statement about the society we live in through its detritus, then surely the picture is incomplete without it.