Rags are Ritches

More Information

Tyrrell Winston’s work with found objects began with walks around New York City, and basketball nets were some of the first items that he collected. Eager for his art to have a relevant social message, Winston had started his collecting of cigarettes and drug paraphernalia both to find materials for his work and to help clean up litter in public spaces. While doing so, he overheard kids in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood complaining about how the nets on public basketball courts were always in disrepair and were never fixed. Winston was thus inspired not only to collect nets from outdoor courts, but to replace them as an act of community service. He would thus arm himself with a supply of fresh nets and a ladder, walking from court to court and replacing each tattered net that he encountered. This resulted in works like Rags are Riches, which form Winston’s broader “Network” series (a name with a double meaning, directly indicating work with nets, while also suggesting the networks of communities and subcultures tied to basketball). As the artist explains, “This work cannot exist without the immediate exchange of old and new. It’s equal parts community service and art.” The works might thus be described as a mixture of assemblage and performance. Within the “Network” series, Rags are Riches is a relatively tidy work, with a solid massing of nets. Red and blue accents are distributed across the work, yielding a sense of partially controlled composition. As with so much of Winston’s art, the grime, discoloration, and tearing of the materials suggests their meaningful existence before they were incorporated into a work of art. The title Rags are Riches is also an evocative play on the common phrase “Rags to Riches,” which refers to a person rising from poverty to wealth. While the original colloquialism depends on a strong contrast between the “Rags” of privation and the “Riches” of affluence, Winston’s title collapses the distance between the terms, suggesting that basketball nets only become rags when they are well-used and imbued with the riches of effort, growth, competition, and friendship.