ArtFromRecycledMaterials

Ian Jowett: 'Fly', metal

Ian Holton: 'Cedar Trunk', Recycled wood

Lynn Ashton: 'The Ark', Found wood

Images from the Art from Recycled Materials Exhibition
plus, below, opening remarks delivered by me 24 - 10 - 2009
exhibition runs from 25th Oct. - 1st Nov. 2009
Creswick Victoria, at various venues

Each work in this exhibition is like a book, written in two chapters. The first chapter is the story of what the work used to be and the second chapter the story of what it has become.

You can start to read these works by realizing that the beauty of this kind of art-making lies in the magic act of transforming the material. An act of love, involving both the artists’ hands and heart.

You can start to read these works by realizing that the beauty of this kind of art- making lies in the fact that we can enter and enjoy the process on any level. That recyclable material, as we can see all around us, is capable of true magic.

Each of the works in this exhibition started from what most makers would call a disadvantage, the artists brief, asked to use recyclable materials and useless stuff, fit mostly for landfill. In all cases, this turned out to be the defining feature of the work.

Thanks to the nature of art there are no rules, and thus it was easy to start from the premise of ‘anything is possible’.

In addition, the works in this exhibition also explore the makers’ skills. Wonderful skills. Most works seemed to have arrived at the understanding that the magic of the artist’s work does not lie in the expense of the tools and materials, but in the knowledge of the hands. And that, in the main, it is the limitations of the materials that have created the art.

Recycled materials, as we can see, do not necessarily mean less sophisticated work. Most of the true magic, of that on display, came from working with that which was available, and finding that inspiring and invigorating. This gives the work its potency, while at the same time, allowing the audience a whole new point of view into the process of art making.

This exhibition contains many stories but, besides the story of re-cycling, it is basically just the one story. The story about the true wonder of everything.

MasterPieces

Ploughed Fields

Late afternoon. Sun low in the sky. Driving from Daylesford to Ballarat via Dean. The light is magical. The grass glows with an intense viridian light. The fields look as if lit up from below.

Into one of the green hills a brown field is being drawn by a farmer with a stubby red pencil. His tractor. It labours up and down and slowly fills in the space with a wonderful deep cinnamon brown colour. The lines, left behind by the plough, follow the contours and undulations of the land and make for a fascinating texture and a beautiful strong drawing.

I watch this poetry in slow motion, and am reminded of the Zen gardens of Japan. The gardens of tranquility. Gardens to be contemplated like a painting. These gardens, designed in a setting of Shoin style architecture, led Zen adepts, through contemplation of their art and architecture, to enlightenment.

In creating these gardens the monks, with long wooden rakes, made patterns of strict stylised designs dictated by both the garden boundaries and the specific feeling they needed to obtain. These gardens were not designed for pleasure but as objects of contemplation to be viewed from fixed vantage points.

The Zen gardens, large rectangular shapes based on specific proportions, were framed by borders of cut stone and surrounded on three sides by a wall and, on the remaining side, by a wooden veranda. The viewing point. Large rocks, and rock arrangements, are placed in this rectangular space around which the sand, or very fine gravel, is raked. The whole appearing to be like water flowing around rocks.

We could liken this to sitting meditatively at the side of a creek, just watching the water flow. Good for one's well being. Or taking a break at the side of the road to watch the local farmers slowly rake their large gardens into the most beautiful patterns.

Here, as in the Japanese raked gardens, there are rocks, trees or old stone ruins set into the landscape which, to some extent, dictate the patterns which result. Here as in the consciously designed gardens of the Zen Buddhists the results are rewarding and could easily be contemplative.

I can imagine the farmer, at the end of his working day standing on his veranda and view his raked/ploughed garden, experience a great feeling of well being also. At times feeling he has achieved a masterpiece.

Here, quietly on the side of the road, I am also reminded of the Irish and American patchwork quilt traditions. Maybe carefully designed but always influenced by that which was available. Just like in this huge landscape the materials available, as in the form of the landscape and the tractor, set the tone for the resulting design.

"The power of limits."