Tag: art from trash

Since finding my first drawer on the street a few years ago, I have been contemplating different ‘drawer’ projects. In this exhibition, I use drawers conceptually in relation to sustainability and climate change. The first trigger for this project was the book A Zero Waste Life, which I found in a free ‘little library’ in Lyneham. The second was a Clean Up Australia e-newsletter that stated: “We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly; we need millions of us doing it imperfectly”. To me, the drawers symbolise global, systemic ‘boxed in’ thinking, a business-as-usual mind frame regardless of intensifying environmental crises. Nonetheless, I’ve found Canberrans are increasingly committed to doing something – however imperfectly and each in their own way – to help mitigate climate change. Hearing…

Melbourne was in lockdown longer than any other city in the world: 262 days. During these times, I collected a wide range of trash – including numerous wooden drawers – on my daily outdoor walks. To me, these drawers symbolised containment, lockdown, isolation, quarantine: the situation in which we found ourselves. Yet during this time, I also witnessed immense resilience and spirit. People were undertaking imaginative family activities, exercising in unusual and creative ways, developing productive hobbies, and engaging in stimulating pursuits, all within severe public health restrictions. Despite the cloud of COVID-19, many people were creating their own silver lining. I have used this variety of positive experiences as a trigger to create images in the drawers – often abstractions rather than representations. I assembled them from the metal,…