KUCHING: Plastic waste can be given a new lease of life – and ‘The Bin Art Exhibition’ launched at Saradise Gallery on Saturday (Feb 11) aims to illustrate this to the wider audience.
A group of artists, including lecturers and students from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) had a community engagement with Kampung Muhibbah on the idea of turning plastic waste into art forms or furniture.
At the launching, Sylvester Wielding Jussem, 63, who has 25 years of lecturing experience said he was inspired by foreign products made from waste plastics.
For his piece, he explained that he used plastic bags, shopping bags by ironing them together.
Sylvester explained that a thin plastic was used and he had to use a melting technique.
“It works, but it was quite a challenging task to have it flattened to the board. We recycled plastic and discarded plastic from tinted glass,” he said.
He added that the idea came from his love for fishing during which he found that mangrove trees despite their beauty had plastic litter all around them.
The title of his work is ‘Love Letter for the Mangroves’ which he finished in three days.
He still lectures and despite his age he remains passionate about teaching the fundamentals of art at the university.
Another lecturer, who lectures in the Fine Arts programme in the Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, Anissa Abdul Aziz explained that a total of 21 students took part in the workshop with the community.
She pointed out that the students had to commute back and forth to Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) in Kota Samarahan every Monday as the materials were only available there.
What she hoped for the most from her students was cultivating the aspect of learning art, exploring the usage of the materials and producing the idea of tangible physical artwork.
Anissa also displayed her personal artwork at the exhibition where she constructed personal, imaginative dioramas out of LDPE plastic, waste plastic from the rubbish, plastic beads and plastic ornaments.
Next was Doris Maying, 31, who had a unique design which was comparatively different to the other artwork at the exhibition.
With close to three years of lecturing in UNIMAS, she explained that her artwork made from boxes was a simple idea which symbolises life themed ‘Repurpose’.
“Boxes are usually used and then thrown away, we can use the boxes to store them. Repurposing it into the artwork.
“As we reflect on it, it looks simple, putting some lines but if you see the whole thing, it can be a pattern,” she said.
This is the same as life, Doris said, adding that the process of the artwork took two weeks leading up to the exhibition.
With a lecturing background in 3D artwork and sculptural artwork the cutting process of the boxes was done manually, and cutting the boxes manually took a lot of the time.
During the exhibition, there was another popular figure, Mohamad Zamhari Abol Hassan who lectured in UNIMAS for 11 years. His artwork was unique and it caught the attention of the visitors present at the exhibition.
He explained that the inspiration was to have a local identity, noticing that the majority of local crafts have a bowl and a basket.
Therefore, Zamhari came up with an idea based on recycling items using local basketry for the work itself.
He said that most people who came to visit the exhibition think it’s ceramics probably because most of the artists know that he majors in ceramics but in fact it’s melted plastic which binds plastic and the woven basket, and it is done for visual purposes.
Zamhari said the basket design was dubbed as ‘URAS’ or Urban and Rural Amass of Scraps, the word ‘URAS’ also known in Bahasa Sarawak as rubbish. The artwork is made of bottle plastic, and newspaper.
“Creating something new out of recycled materials, any waste you can turn into something beautiful,” he said.
Explaining the process of making the unique artwork, Zamhari had to blend the plastic bottle to form the bowl and had to use silicon.
He added that the process of having to roll the newspaper and weave it was tricky because it was very experimental.
‘The Bin Art Exhibition’ will go on until Feb 25.
