Art.love.nature » Upcycling & Waste Art

An artistic approach with civic engagement, “Upcycling” or recycling from the top, is at the heart of +Brauer’s creations in France, no matter what material is used to convey the intended message.

With his “Plastic Icon©” series, the artist turns to plastic, a material omnipresent  in our environment, threatening the planet and literally suffocating all beings. (Every second, 200 kg of plastic is dumped in the oceans, more than 100,000 marine mammals die every year, and if we go on like this, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.)

Through a series of 20th century iconic portraits, the artist tackles this material by meticulously assembling hundreds of discarded plastic pieces from toys, pens, bottles, packaging to mundane objects of our daily lives, in different sizes and colors, carefully chosen, collected and classified.

John Sabraw makes art from pigments obtained from acid mine drainage in USA, and paints to raise awareness of the problem, and their solution: to turn the ugly into the beautiful.

For decades, pollution from abandoned underground coalmines has been killing aquatic life in waterways. This high concentration of acid and heavy metals is called acid mine drainage, or ‘AMD’, and pollutes over 1,300 miles of streams in Ohio alone. Some of these AMD polluting mine seeps release over one million gallons of toxic water each day.

Artist & illustrator Quentin Horn shares:

Felix (our Son) is obsessed with picking up “treasures” it started with glass on the beach and now wherever we go,
he is picking up and cleaning public spaces. Needless to say, we have a lot of “trash” in containers at home.

So we were playing around with some pieces and these ideas came to us.

See some of Quentin’s work as part of VERGE from 10-30 November at the Old Gaol in Knysna (read more).

Clothes-peg spectacle arm
My daughter when she was 18 months old was sitting on my lap at my desk when she grabbed my glasses and viciously twisted them while smiling at me, breaking off the arm and bending it to such angle as to render it useless. She was into pegs at the time and had a few pegged to her dress. We entered into a negotiation which culminated in the deal – an arm for a peg.

“NOT out of sight, NOT out of mind”

Calling all artists, architects, designers and creative activists…

Timeframe

• • Open call announced October 3rd, 2018

• • Submission deadline, Midnight (GMT+2) November 15th, 2018

• • Public Announcement of selected works, December 14th 2018

• • Bootcamp/kick-off meeting, early February 2019

• • Production residencies, March – April 2019 (in Latvia or Estonia)

• • Launch of artworks (time when artworks have to be ready): April 30 2019

What this is about

“NOT out of sight, NOT out of mind” is a creative information campaign that aims to increase public awareness of consumer material waste issues and resource efficiency in today’s society.

New work created by Patrick Tagoe-Turkson in his characteristic technique, while on residency in Japan in July 2018

View more at patricktagoeturkson.com

Serial Killer IV
Monotype by Emma Kielczynska

Materials used
monotype of dip-dyed found waste objects pressed into cotton paper.
Size
W:46cm x H:71cm x D:0.1cm (paper size, unframed)
Edition 1 of 1, signed

The impact that our consumerist society has on our planet is an issue that remains close to my heart, and it is one that cannot be ignored. The plastic bag is the ubiquitous feature of all polluted landscapes and so provides a fitting symbol for the litter that is consuming us.

Artist: Tan Zi Xi
Art installation displayed at the Sassoon Docks Art Project, an initiative by St+Art India

“The walls in the space were covered in mirrors making the plastic waste the only thing that can be seen. Standing in the middle of the display, the spectator is offered a unique point of view – that of a fish.”

Tan Zi Xi’s website >>

Source: onegreenplanet.org/news/exhibit-shows-fish-in-plastic-trash

I add the denim skull too, as it might be my favourite one, but I particularly wanted to share the plastic bottle skulls with you…

Follow him on Facebook >>

View more of his skulls >>

Also checkout frankoleonrey.blogspot.com >>

I’m sure you must’ve seen these awesome sculptures by Veronika Richterová already?

“When I found out by chance, that plastic bottles could be deformed by heat I decided to create a sculpture from this material. Immediately, I had the idea that it could be called PET-art however, I took it only as one of my visual experimentations. I didn’t anticipate that plastic bottles would become such an obsession for me for many years.