“A Sight To Sea” Readers Digest on John Dahlsen
Other people’s rubbish is full of possibilities to renowned environmental artist John Dahlsen, who has been making a statement with his confronting, innovative artworks for almost ten years.
In 1997, contemporary abstract painter Dahlsen started combing remote Victorian beaches looking for driftwood to make some furniture for his new Northern NSW home.
For three weeks, he strolled along the beach during the early morning and collected enough driftwood for his furniture – and almost 80 jumbo sized garbage bags of ocean litter. He piled it all into a furniture truck and paid for it to be driven back to his house in Byron Bay.
His booty from the sea was bits of polystyrene foam, old rubber thongs, plastic bags and drink bottles.
Initially, Dahlsen was responding to an instinct to clean the beach as he wandered along, but his tidy-ups triggered more than a sense of satisfaction:
“I was amazed at how pristine the beaches looked each time I left a location, but it was also during this collecting time that I became more intrigued by what nature had done to the plastics,” he says.
Once his loot arrived home, the artist set about creating his first environmental work, a semi-abstract “landscape” made from abandoned plastic objects assembled behind perspex.
Ever since then, his creations have all had a strong environmental bent. His work has included totem poles made from thongs, soft-drink bottles and old boat buoys, as well as sculptures and wall works made from a rainbow of old plastic bags.
His acclaimed 10.5 metre high sculpture The Guardian, stands just next to Brisbane’s Story Bridge and is made from galvanized guardrails and concrete pipes sourced from road construction sites.
People familiar with Dahlsen’s work have told him that his beach litter creations have changed the way they walk along the beach – he has even received donations of coastal rubbish from those he’s inspired.
Fellow artists and collectors, Vicki Vidor and Peter Avery, bought two of Dahlsen’s wall works that appealed to their environmental consciences.
“The fact that he turns this litter, which would otherwise go into landfill, into an art form is a great message,” says Avery. “His work makes the viewer think about the environment.”
As the self-confessed “accidental environmentalist” says, “Beaches get cleaner and people see what’s possible in terms of reuse and renewing.”
