“Recycling Rag” ENVIRONMENTAL ARTISTS
One of an artist’s ambitions is to make us see the world around us in new and different ways, and maybe rethink our relationship to it. In this issue of The Recycling Rag, we visit with three artists whose work comments on the environment and the way we relate to it by transforming trash into works of art.
John Dahlsen has been painting and sculpting in his native Australia for the past 20 years. In that time his work has evolved from the formal training he received in art school to incorporating new elements also native to Australia – ocean litter: plastic bags, driftwood, rope and any other detritus washed up on the beach.
[private free|gold|free special]
Now most of his award-winning work contains recycled materials – he even draws and paints on handmade recycled paper – and discarded rubber thongs or flip-flips have become one of his signature media.
In 2004 he represented his country at the Olympics of Visual Arts “Artiade,” a juried exhibition for artists around the world held simultaneously with the Olympic Games in Athens. His entry was a triptych of digital prints showing assembled waste items sorted into bright primary colours.
Mr. Dahlsen was the first Australian to join the ranks of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente and Damien Hirst, by completing a commission for Absolut of Sweden in 2004.
“Absolut Dahlsen” is one huge vodka bottle – it stands 4.5 metres high and 1.5 metres at the base – made of fibreglass and steel on concrete steel footings and covered with rubber thongs. It is exhibited on The Gold Coast City Art Gallery’s sculpture walk, in Queensland, Australia.
In the U.S., his work was seen in a show he helped curate, “Recycled Revisited: Artistic Responses to the Earth Charter” at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY, New Paltz, New York.
As part of a three-day art festival in Jefferson City, Missouri, in August, Mr. Dahlsen was invited to create a public artwork from recycled plastic bags, another material he uses frequently. A month before his arrival, residents and businesses throughout the entire city, collected plastic bags of all colours and sizes and dropped them off at a bank and the Park Service office.
