The Adlington Post

Last week a reporter from our local North Shore Times came to my home to interview me on matters regarding freganing & dumpster diving. Between 30-40% of the food produced in NZ is wasted at some point on the food chain. The reporter asked me if a family of four could live from the food disposed of in local dumpsters - "easily" I replied - they would probably even thrive on all the fruit & vegetables disposed of because of a slight blemish or (horror!) odd shape.

 Here is my 2011 Xmas tree which exemplifies the true spirit of Christmas as practised. The key ingredients are money, possessions, greed, & prostitution. My inspiration is a Quaker quote from the 19th century (sorry to be so old-fashioned): "Let those of us who are opposed to war look into our own homes and the furnishings of those homes for the seeds of war" - feel free, gentle reader, to substitute the words "global financial collapse" or "vulture capitalism" for "war".

The week before Xmas a very professional team from Whitebait TV spent the best part of a day with me - doing an interview & filming for a documentary on environmental artists in New Zealand - to be screened on TV sometime early this year. We had fun in the dumpster & on the beach. Hopefully I was able to get my message across: the motto is "reduce, reuse, recycle" - but no-one talks about reducing! I guess the likes of the Warehouse, Harvey Norman etc won't like that message. Too bad. The problem with the current recycling fad is that it to me it makes buying crap OK - as long as you recycle it when you're done. Sorry, but no, it doesn't work that way: Just don't buy crap in the first place. The core of the problem is that most people can't differentiate between their needs & their wants - more on this later. In the meantime, may I suggest viewers read "To Have or to Be" by Erich Fromm - a seminal text on the topic.

After over a decade in business the Browns Bay TAB in Anzac Square closed in mid - December 2011 and moved to Albany. Not only is the betting industry in trouble, so is the bloodstock industry. This year's sales at Karaka have been disappointing. Read HERE for more information from Radio National.

This is the first of a series of posts documenting some the changes in the community where I live. As the economic situation worsens, business here in Browns Bay are closing their doors. When the mall opened at nearby Albany in 2007 the fall-off in trade, visitors & traffic was immediately apparent in this beach-side suburb.Then the recession began in 2008, & the rot began with the closure of the Woolworths Supermarket. Although the 2011 Rugby World Cup was touted as being a potential financial bonanza for business of all types, in fact the only ones to benefit were the RWC itself & the grog merchants who sponsored the whole thing. Trade for most retailers declined as any disposable income people had was spent on expensive tickets for the games.Christmas sales were subdued - people are paying for all the toys houses & batches they bought when credit was readily available. So far there has been very little summer weather to bring people to the beach - so trade has s

On Sunday I met Penny Millen from "Naturallynz" who sells a very popular line of healthy dog food - www.naturallynz.com

The junk collection continues to grow! I have become more selective in my gatherings, bringing home mainly smaller items for future use, otherwise I would soon run out of space. See more of my recycled, upcycled and environmental works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

The children [& teachers] from the local Browns Bay Pre School have invited me to assist them construct a sculpture for the playground which the children have designed. Here is the "sculpture group" with their tentative layout for the work - comprised of pieces of pumice from Lake Taupo, & steel rods from an old fence.

Where I belong...in a dumpster!: expounding Post Modern Trash Theory to people from AK Uni - audio & video of the interview following shortly on mywebsite & Youtube channel... On Thursday 13th August I will be talking with environmental guru Tim Lynch on GreenPlanet FM 104.6: "How Joe Six-Pack Can Help Save the World"...available later on podcast from www.greenplanetfm.com

Follow this link to see the feature on my recycled art on TV1 Breakfast earlier in May: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWRcfeLfeNg

My tomato plant on Labour Day 2008 - almost 6 foot tall & still growing!! Over 60 flowers with five tomatoes so far. Planted in a plastic bucket I got from the trash. See more of my food adventures at www.pavlovasdog.weebly.com

Another readymade - I found this fantastic piece of signage by the local creek (Taiaotea = “ocean of clouds”). It has the most beautiful aged surface - the white paint has crazed revealing blue & pink beneath.

This week is annual inorganic rubbish collection time in my area. People can put out almost any rubbish which is too large to go into their weekly bin. I have had great fun driving round in my van picking stuff out for use in recycled artworks. There is lots of stuff to look at and make selections from. There are some things I am looking for for projects (flip-flops & CD’s), otherwise my rule-of-thumb is “what in this pile has sculptural qualities?” - this takes an imaginative ‘eye’ - & hopefully I am getting better at it. Ideal finds include anything with “kiwina-kitsch” connotations - unfortunately these are hard to come by, tho I did find this little folk-art kiwi.

Every Sunday I make the rounds of several skips [dumpsters] in the industrial estate & outside charity shops. Sometimes I come home with very little, other times I find some real gems...all raw materials for robots, clocks, mobiles etc. I take a stepladder to get up to the bigger skips, & have large boxes in the van to hold the goodies. I also take a crowbar, wire-cutters, a hammer, & a wrench - so that I can free/undo the bits I want. At present it is winter here, down-under, so I am often out there in the cold rain. I take a thermos of hot water with me & afterwards park-up beside the beach & enjoy a large cup of tea & a biscuit - before talking a walk on the beach in search of flotsam & jetsam. The green skip is outside the scrap-metal dealers, I have also shown its contents last week - it was very full, & I couldn’t delve very deeply. I got some tins (robots & trucks), 2 pair of gardening shears (hands for a figure?), & some barbell wei

Last month I entered 5 pieces into a local art exhibition entitled "Paper, Plastic, Packaging" - all entries had to be made from recycled/reclaimed materials. I was pleased & most surprised to win first prize with my entry "Flip-Flop Fish" - comprising fish shapes cut from jandals/thongs/flip-flops {call them what you will} which I found on beaches during my summer travels in my camper-van around the North Island. They looked a little boring, all being plain colours, so I splashed some paint on them a la Jack the Dripper [Jackson Pollock] - & they came out pretty well. Will post the other entries over the next few days. At present I am working on a mobile Alexander Calder-style using more flip-flop fish - it's great making something which moves: painting certainly is dead! SOLD See more of my  recycled, upcycled and environmental works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

I found an old children’s book at the local market several weeks ago. Inside the cover is a certificate saying that it was presented to one Diane Goldsbury (S2) at Waitahinga School in 1957. What a gem! These cheerful chappies appear inside: can you spot the golliwog twins?

MISSION STATEMENT An unbearable reality of present-day life is that as the natural resources of our world are depleted, they become replaced by an environment of manufactured objects, and these industrial artefacts become the raw materials from which we must produce more. The role of the recycled artist (the bricoleur) is to refashion new visions of our world from its leavings, transforming not only objects but meanings, and introducing new ways of experiencing and imagining our world and ourselves. In many ways recycling - or the process of borrowing, quoting, and recontextualizing objects, images and ideas - is the best metaphor for the way in which meaning is constructed and understood in our contemporary world. Art is therefore the process whereby we transform the crudity of our world and make it bearable. *********************************************************** I have made art & craft work from recycled materials all my life, but I am now concentrating on that as