The Memory

Choice, Need, or Obligation?

The adoption of recycled products in everyday life, from reusable cloth bags replacing single use plastics at supermarket checkouts, has passed through three stages: an individual choice in the late 20th century, an ecological necessity in the early 21st century, and today, an obligation enforced by legislation (European Commission, 2019).

But how does this transformation resonate in the art world? In recycled art, the discarded material is not merely a physical support; the material's past life constitutes the work's central message. This reveals a tension between the object's history and its new artistic identity (Whiteley, 2011). Traditional art asks, "How did the artist create this from raw material?" (Gombrich, 1995); recycled art asks, "Why did the artist choose this particular piece of waste to convey their message?" (Danto, 1981).

The use of waste and everyday objects in art spans more than 110 years. In the 1910s, Cubism saw Picasso and Braque incorporate mass-produced materials into the canvas, dismantling traditional illusion. Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning (1912) stands as the emblem of this rupture.

In the 1920s, Dadaism propelled Marcel Duchamp to carry serially produced objects into the gallery, inaugurating the concept of the Readymade. Kurt Schwitters, through his Merz collages assembled from urban refuse, granted artistic value to the detritus of daily life.

The industrial boom following the Second World War drove artists to scrapyards as a form of critique against consumer society. Picasso's Bull's Head (1942), fashioned from a discarded bicycle saddle and handlebars, remains the most striking example of this period. By the late 1960s, the Italian Arte Povera movement turned to rags and scrap materials in protest against the commercialisation of the art market (Celant, 1969).

From the 1990s to the present, upcycling and eco-art have evolved into powerful tools for drawing attention to the climate crisis (Whiteley, 2011). Vik Muniz's Pictures of Garbage series (2008), portraying garbage pickers using the very refuse they collect, offered a profound social and ecological consciousness (Walker, 2010).

The Framing Paradox: A Sentence Without a Full Stop

As an artist, I choose to continue this century long partnership with recycled materials today. Every material I use is recycled. Yet when it comes to framing my work, I arrive at the most difficult stage of my practice.

Using non-recycled frames that do not match the original and authentic character of my work feels like a sentence without a full stop. A house without a door, unprotected. Two people speaking different languages, misunderstood.

The 110 year history of recycled art began with the material telling its own story. But that story remains incomplete when the frame cannot speak the same language. The art world's shift towards a circular economy, accelerating under the Gallery Climate Coalition, has not yet reached the framing workshop. The integrity of recycled art can only be fully realised when it is enclosed by a recycled frame.