AGA Lab Artist Residency, Netherlands, Nov 2023
end
End of residency exhibition view of the work produced during the residency.
Remnants, a group show at De Bowuput, Amsterdam, NL.
Images of my sketchbook that was started, grew and filled during the residency as I drank tea. Pages are made of the paper that wraps each individual tea bag. The front cover was conveniently and convivially completed with a strip of used canvas that was found on a frame about to get thrown out, found right at the end of the residency.
Image of an interior, lit by fluorescent light tubes. A set of closed doors, made of metal with big glass windows, set next to a pale blue service duct/column. In the windows, plants with a brilliant rose hip are knocking from the outside outside on a rainy night, most nights.
My crew(?) while I was away from tomato plants, infusing into a new environment.
Image of
used tea bags air drying inside a cupboard, amongst regular groceries.
Just several hours of train ride away from London, the landscape of grocery packaging is dramatically different. There was hardly any Tetrapak to be found, other than the ones I brought along. Tetrapak is made up of a layer of card, a layer of aluminium foil and films/coatings of plastics. The milk cartons I found on supermarket shelves use a packaging material that skipped the layer of aluminium foil. Mono-material is the holy grail of recyclable designs, packagings are rarely mono-material in my encounters. If not in the form of all plastics, plastic films and coatings are in a lot of food packaging, often mixed with cartons and aluminium: beverage cartons, soft drink cans, takeaway cups… crisp packets are made of metallised plastic films; and, of course, tea bags. Packaging materials are open to be read, if only you know the language of industrial machines. Through reclaiming materials, I learnt that if it looks like it has been heat-pressed to seal, even if it appears not as plastic, it’s most probably got plastic - woven, lined, coated, etc.
Every aubergine in the supermarket is wrapped in plastic. I ate no aubergine during the artist residency. It didn’t take me long with my well-seasoned, borrowed bike to find markets that sell fresh vegetables without plastics. A 10-minute bike ride away to the nearest market rather than a 3-minute one to the supermarket. It was stormy, rainy and windy most of the time, without the bike, the ability to ride a bike and a generous local artist, Jelly, who lent me her rainpants, those 7 minutes charted by curiosity would have been draining. Exhausting, one day one of the local printmakers made a remark on the way I work, said in a way that gives me good energy to keep going. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, washing materials that could have efficiently and conveniently been taken care of by the bin. But humans are creatures of adaptation, we adapt to convenience and packaging well within a human’s lifetime. I continued to wash away.
Image of collographs I produced using waste materials for image making. The collographs are set on top of a massive fabric printing table covered in tarps, ready for a group crit towards, visited by the unusual sunshine.
Image of The Scream (2023), an artist proof of a collograph made of packaging waste.
“Of course, you must find it but not buy it.” he said, playfully, referring to the tag I needed to hang “The Scream”. There’s only 1 day left before the show. “Yes.” I replied confidently. I went outside with my borrowed bike and found one next to a bin.
Exhibited Works: