In essence, this is my way of making a difference with art. At the same time I’m sharing a positive message about beauty and what can be gained from the aesthetic experience of appreciating this environmental artwork, as well as giving examples of how we can recycle and reuse and look at the environment in creative ways.
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These environmental artworks do exemplify my commitment as an artist to express contemporary social and environmental concerns on the one hand and on the other, by presenting this art to the public you will have hopefully had people thinking about the deeper meaning of the work, in particular the environmental issues we currently face and are currently facing everybody on this planet, as we are a global unity.
I only hope and I will always hope that these artworks that I create, will act as a constant reminder to people about awareness of our planet and our need to walk gently on it.
One of the most important things would be for me to find people having the enjoyment of my work on many levels, to find themselves becoming identified in various ways with the artworks that they see. I also look forward to the possible discussion my artworks generate as a result of people observing them and taking them in.
All of these things of course are simply possibilities, which do in fact manifest in people regularly make comments to me about their consciousness, while they have walked the beach, being awakened after seeing my found plastic object artworks, either as sculptures or assemblages, installations or digital prints.
Similarly when people are seeing my recycled plastic bag series and have then marvelled at the creative way I am presenting the recycling theme in an aesthetic way, it touches me. With all of these things in mind I’ve trusted leaving the final alchemy of my work to the viewer with the possibility that they may experience deep perceptual ships and have a positive aesthetic experience as they interact in many various ways with my art forms.
Variety of expression – Recycled plastic bag art
It is important to me as an artist to keep exploring many different forms of expression so that I never feel limited by my creative output. I would never like to see myself being categorized to the point where I felt I was not able to keep exploring whatever it was that I wanted to explore for whatever reason.
In many ways I think that this was also why developed new works using recycled plastic bags as a primary medium at one stage. An artwork called Blue River is one of my most well-known works using this medium. This work was a finalist in the Wynne prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney Australia in 2003. This particular wall-work had literally thousands of recycled plastic bags, which formed a contemporary landscape behind Perspex.
My recycled plastic bag environmental artwork is a departure from the more recognizable assemblage works in which I used plastics and other found objects detritus collected from somewhere along Australia’s eastern seaboard. The artwork titled “Thong Totems”, which won the Wynne prize in 2000, is a good example.
With this recycled plastic artwork, apart from wishing to express obvious environmental messages, I’ve been particularly interested in the brilliance of the colours and textures available to me as I use this medium, to create not only wall works and assemblages but also sculptures and other art forms, the possibilities are truly endless.
I am constantly surprised to see the variations in these plastics, This is also how I am intrigued by the beach found objects which I have collected over the years. The most recent example of my working in the recycled plastic bags medium was in 2005, when I was artist in residence at Jefferson City, Missouri, USA.
It was here that I made a series of totemic installations with thousands of plastic bags in clear acrylic tubes for their sculpture walk. I imagine these plastic bags, which mostly have a lifespan of many years, are possibly facing extinction, as governments are beginning to impose deterrents to people using them. In the mean time I am able as a contemporary environmental artist, to use these recycled materials, to create artworks which, I hope express a certain beauty, as well as containing their own unique environmental messages.
