The Adlington Post

Helen & Yudi are kindly stocking my recycled artworks in their eclectic shop [Buanu Satu - "Number One" in Indonesian] in K Rd, Auckland, & they have made a display area for the pieces...as seen below. Thanks guys - its a great showpiece for me. We see here a cross & a heart of "flowers" cut from egg cartons on real-estate sign, an eco-game, a clock - with more clocks below, 'fridge magnets on crosses cut from waste steel, 3 large robots made from tin cans, several small robots from sweet & mustard tins, a flying saucer from an old lampshade, a truck from an oil can, fish cut from jandals I found on the beach - mounted on more real-estate sign, & more clocks....see blog entries below for close-up pix of most of these works...& remember the 3R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - the most important being REDUCE! See more recycled & upcycled work at www.martinadlington.webs.com

I found this flip-flop at Raglan. It’s mounted on a piece of core-flute from a real estate sign. There's a piece of fishing line I found at Tangimoana [= "Ocean of Tears"] on the back - so the work can be hung on the wall. SOLD See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

Last May I spent a couple of weeks at Coromandel town touring the annual arts trail. I stayed at a beach-side campground in my van, & spent several pleasant hours beachcombing. On one walk I filled my carry-bag with these knots of plastic rope. They wash ashore from the many mussel & oyster farms out in the bay. Here I have arranged them on a picnic table in the quintessential polynesian form of a lei. SOLD  See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.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.

These fascinating objects have been collected on the beach here in Browns Bay. I am reading an 18th Century book on archaeology & found this description of “thunderbolts” which I feel suits my finds very well: “After close scientific examination I have concluded that they are formed by an admixture of a certain exhalation of thunder and lightning with metallic matter in dark clouds, which is coagulated by the circumfused moisture and coagulated in a mass (like flour with water) and subsequently indurated like a brick”. See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

Every year there is a competition for artwork for the cover of the telephone book in each city in NZ. Here is my entry for Auckland. Entitled “Flip Flop Fish Family” I have tried to sum up the “feel” of Auckland - family life, beach fun, recreational fishing, our casual lifestyle (many people go barefoot or simply wear jandals), the tapa design border references the large Polynesian population, & the Chinese text (“Give Thanks for the Abundance of Heaven”) refers to the growing Asian influence here. The backing is a piece of a real-estate sign - as elsewhere there has been a greedy property scramble - which has thankfully collapsed for a while. SOLD See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

I entered this work into a major art competition here in Auckland last week - the North Shore City Art Awards 2008 -so far I have been accepted to submit the piece for the second selection round. The theme of the exhibition is “Earth, Wind & Sky”. My work is entitled “Headland” & is 36inx20in. It’s a section of a blue drum I found, cut to shape & flattened out. The blue is sky, the scratches are suggestive of land forms, & the white stripe which I have painted represents a yacht mast. SOLD See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

This mobile is for sale at Buana Satu in K Rd. "As the natural resources of our world are depleted, they become replaced by an environment of manufactured objects, and in turn these industrial artefacts become the raw materials from which we must produce more. For many people this crude reality is unbearable. The role of the recycled artist 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. Art is therefore the process whereby we can transform the crudeness of reality and make our world bearable." -adapted from “The Recycling Strategies of Self-Taught Artists” by J Cubbs & EW Metcalf in “Recycled Re-Seen - Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap” by Charlene Cerny See more of my recycled, upcycled and environmental works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

When I was in Napier last summer I spent time out at Haumoana beach, just south of Napier. (“hau” = wind/breath, “moana” = sea/ocean...so “breath/breathing of the ocean” I guess) There is no sand here on this rugged west coast shore - but zillions of small black pebbles instead. The waves roll them up & down the steep beach......& the sound is amazing, just like the sea breathing in & out. I took a short video too, & love to listen to it with the sound up LOUD! One day I drove the van onto the beach & when I jumped out - this incredible piece of art was right at my feet. People had lit a bonfire & thrown pieces of thin alloy metal from a car into the flames - which melted & later solidified into this fabulous amorphous shape. On the back of the piece are stuck hundreds of stones from the beach....a great memento of my happy beach combing days at Haumoana.

Last summer I spent a few days at Lake Taupo (an enormous volcanic crater-lake in the center of the North Island). Early one morning I went down to the lake’s shore to look for pumice for jewellery & sculptures. In the car park I found several bottle caps discarded by drinkers the night before, I gathered them up & threw them onto a rock by the lake’s edge & took this photo. To me the pic says a lot about the thoughtless disposal of rubbish.

I have always admired the works of Andy Goldsworthy, & have often said “If only I could see as he does”! With my growing interest in trash, I am beginning to see in my OWN way - jandals are fish, in tin cans I see arms/legs/bodies of robots, or parts for trucks. Other broken, worn pieces of metal & plastic are ideally suited for inclusion in assemblage works concerning the environment. Recently I returned from beachcombing with a bag of pieces of plastic. I emptied the bag out onto the floor, & immediately “saw” a spontaneously-produced composition. I took a photo, them threw the pieces again..& again. The results are here. Andy G. performs “throws” with dust & sticks - which don’t particularly appeal to me, but I can see that the approach has a lot of potential....these are my first efforts along these lines- it’s great fun! See more of my  recycled, upcycled and environmental works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

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

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