THE STORY OF WASTE
ArtOficals
Tony Rice, of Brisbane Australia, has been a local artist for over 30 years. His environmental concerns have led him to make artwork from found plastic washed up from the sea.
On a regular visit to the Stradbroke Island, off the coast of Queensland Australia,
Tony came across some Indigenous Women on Main Beach gathering seedpods to germinate. These seedpods where deposited on the beaches due to a recent storm surge. Viewing these women inspired him to help with their collection, as he searched through the ebbs of the sand he noticed vast amounts of plastic that had been washed up on to the sandy shores. He says, “I came across the piles of rubbish and I noticed the beautiful colours of the many washed-up cigarette lighters.”
Tony felt a need to collect them “I started collecting and in two days, I had nearly three hundred lighters from the main Beach alone.” These rusted, faded bits of plastic individually appeared to be litter, but to Tony they were colorful and they had interesting designs. Combining his collection Tony laid his lighters across the sand.
“By arranging these beautiful bleached-out shades of pure plastic it created a totally different response. I came up with spectral lines forming a colourful winding snake of lighters.”
Photographing these lines in different Beach locations the relationship between the sand, sun, colours, and the ‘banded patterns’ of the lighters, began to grow. With a newfound passion for collecting plastic from beaches (Mainly local beaches) Tony created life and beauty out an object normally seen as rubbish.
“ I started out with lighters but realised I had to pick up everything. I want to make artwork from this resource for many years to come.”
Using plastic as a medium emphasizes the obvious environmental issues, “I wanted to create works that had with in them a message regarding this as a pollutant of our watery environment. I discovered that the great islands of plastic congregate in the oceans of the World and slowly breakdown into Micro-particles that are ultimately eaten by fish and enter the food chain.”
With this scenario very apparent, Tony decided to create “Art Oficials” human forms made of plastic to symbolise our ultimate fate as humans with bits of plastic in our bodies’.
There is a sort of transfiguration going on here in creating human forms out of our very own waste. This waste comes from the many creeks and waterways that empty into the ocean along with rubbish from boats and beach goers, which all finds it’s way back onto the beach.
With this problem very apparent, Tony has replicated sea animals such as dolphins and sea turtles in an inspiring style. These structures have a skeletal appearance and inside of these creatures is an internal digestive system made from the plastic that Tony has collected from the beach. He says that “occasionally animals can be found dead on the shorelines caught in plastic and nets and others have rotted over time revealing plastic embedded in their stomach.” The Stradbroke Island Research Centre has been advising Tony about which animals are under most threat. Tony has represented these animals with his sculptures made from bamboo, cane and plastic waste.
‘Plastic Dinners’ are another of Tony’s creations. Served up in a Japanese style platter, tangles of rope and plastic are presented as food. “Like the animal kingdom’s version, of ‘the last supper’.”
Tony’s latest exhibition, appropriately named “WASTE”, contains over three hundred lighters, more than eighty kilos of broken, beautiful bleached plastic from the beaches of Moreton Bay and the Gold Coast. There is a never-ending surplus in our environment. But one local artist is exploiting this waste and crafting beauty, highlighting the obvious threat of our environment. “I intend to spend the rest of my life collecting plastic from Moreton Bay.”
On a regular visit to the Stradbroke Island, off the coast of Queensland Australia,
Tony came across some Indigenous Women on Main Beach gathering seedpods to germinate. These seedpods where deposited on the beaches due to a recent storm surge. Viewing these women inspired him to help with their collection, as he searched through the ebbs of the sand he noticed vast amounts of plastic that had been washed up on to the sandy shores. He says, “I came across the piles of rubbish and I noticed the beautiful colours of the many washed-up cigarette lighters.”
Tony felt a need to collect them “I started collecting and in two days, I had nearly three hundred lighters from the main Beach alone.” These rusted, faded bits of plastic individually appeared to be litter, but to Tony they were colorful and they had interesting designs. Combining his collection Tony laid his lighters across the sand.
“By arranging these beautiful bleached-out shades of pure plastic it created a totally different response. I came up with spectral lines forming a colourful winding snake of lighters.”
Photographing these lines in different Beach locations the relationship between the sand, sun, colours, and the ‘banded patterns’ of the lighters, began to grow. With a newfound passion for collecting plastic from beaches (Mainly local beaches) Tony created life and beauty out an object normally seen as rubbish.
“ I started out with lighters but realised I had to pick up everything. I want to make artwork from this resource for many years to come.”
Using plastic as a medium emphasizes the obvious environmental issues, “I wanted to create works that had with in them a message regarding this as a pollutant of our watery environment. I discovered that the great islands of plastic congregate in the oceans of the World and slowly breakdown into Micro-particles that are ultimately eaten by fish and enter the food chain.”
With this scenario very apparent, Tony decided to create “Art Oficials” human forms made of plastic to symbolise our ultimate fate as humans with bits of plastic in our bodies’.
There is a sort of transfiguration going on here in creating human forms out of our very own waste. This waste comes from the many creeks and waterways that empty into the ocean along with rubbish from boats and beach goers, which all finds it’s way back onto the beach.
With this problem very apparent, Tony has replicated sea animals such as dolphins and sea turtles in an inspiring style. These structures have a skeletal appearance and inside of these creatures is an internal digestive system made from the plastic that Tony has collected from the beach. He says that “occasionally animals can be found dead on the shorelines caught in plastic and nets and others have rotted over time revealing plastic embedded in their stomach.” The Stradbroke Island Research Centre has been advising Tony about which animals are under most threat. Tony has represented these animals with his sculptures made from bamboo, cane and plastic waste.
‘Plastic Dinners’ are another of Tony’s creations. Served up in a Japanese style platter, tangles of rope and plastic are presented as food. “Like the animal kingdom’s version, of ‘the last supper’.”
Tony’s latest exhibition, appropriately named “WASTE”, contains over three hundred lighters, more than eighty kilos of broken, beautiful bleached plastic from the beaches of Moreton Bay and the Gold Coast. There is a never-ending surplus in our environment. But one local artist is exploiting this waste and crafting beauty, highlighting the obvious threat of our environment. “I intend to spend the rest of my life collecting plastic from Moreton Bay.”
