“Foraging in the Wastestream”, various artists, curated by Tami Esancy ·
The Gallery, Ellenbrook Arts ·

Artistic expression can spring from the most unlikely of places, an idea that artist Tami Esancy demonstrates as she uncovers a rich vein of inspiration from what the rest of us might see as rubbish.

Esancy has curated “Foraging in the Wastestream”, in which she and five other artists – Kerrie Argent, Sophie G Nixon, Peter Dailey, Ingrid Mulder and Beverley Iles – offer insights into our problems with waste, and ask some pertinent questions about our “insatiable appetite for consumerism”.

The exhibition emerged from a series of residencies the artists undertook at the Bullsbrook Recycling Centre where they researched issues around waste, ran workshops and gathered found objects to use in their art.

In 2020 Esancy curated “Dumped”, a similar group show which looked specifically at illegal dumping. This time the focus shifts to ideas around reusing and repurposing products to keep them out of the landfill. The results, on show at Ellenbrook Arts, display a wide diversity of approach and materials, from repurposed fabric and paper to reassembled toys and recycled plumbing parts.

Standouts in the exhibition are Ingrid Mulder’s works, in particular All in a day, a collection of five “rescued” vintage dresses, each of a similarly plain style, but given thought-provoking new life by Mulder’s addition of cyanotype printing. This has imbued them with bold blue images of their imagined previous domestic service – buttons, pegs, kitchen utensils and other symbols of “women’s work”. In doing so, she honours the utilitarian nature of their purpose and elevates both the garments and the value of the person who wore them.

Kerrie Argent challenges the notion of art as decor that is simply moved on and replaced when the style of a home’s furnishings is updated. Her installations Choose the art because you love it, not because it matches the furniture (I, II and III) turn that idea on its head. Argent has created three impressive pieces of wall art from repurposed fabrics and for each she has styled a domestic interior of reconstructed furniture pieces to match the art. The centrepiece works are each quite different in their aesthetic but nevertheless achieve a consistent sense of harmony in texture, shape and pattern, and are quite lovely pieces in themselves.

Another highlight is Sophie G Nixon’s examination of discarded mattresses – a prominent feature at the Bullsbrook Recycling Centre – which reimagines these piles of well-used bedding in Laid to Rest, a deftly realised landscape in watercolour. They take the exploration further in Fieldwork, an absorbing video that serves as a kind of quirky ode to these quite intimate items that “grow the seeds of our bodies’ memories”.

With the artists from a variety of backgrounds and using different mediums, the collected “Wastestream” works are, not surprisingly, a little uneven but each successfully advances the conversation around waste. And their ability to find an aesthetic value in discarded items encourages the viewer to question our own propensity to thoughtlessly throw things away when we see no further use for them.

“Foraging in the Wastestream” continues until 8 December 2022.

Pictured top: Sophie G Nixon, ‘Fieldwork’, video (still) 2022