The Adlington Post

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

Yesterday I facilitated a school-holiday workshop for a group of children at the Lakehouse Community Arts Centre in Takapuna. We made several objects from recycled materials: a clock, a fridge-magnet, a key-ring, a brooch, & a robot.

A material which is freely & easily available in quantity is the plastic core flute which is used for real estate signs. I cut one up into a couple of fish shapes. they are about 2 feet or 60cm long. Once I figured out that the shape was more dynamic when cut on an angle the fish came alive! Later I will cut some more & maybe make a mobile with them. SOLD See more of my recycled and upcycled works at www.martinadlington.webs.com

On Saturday I drove to South Auckland to the Polynesian suburb of Otara where there is a big market on Saturday mornings. I bought this funky recycled tiki at one of the jewellery stalls. There is a lot of paua-shell jewellery for sale, & evidently stocks of this shell are being depleted. Some enterprising person has come up with the idea of using chips of shell left over from the cutting process - they have made a mould, mixed the paua chips with fibreglass & cast the image. I was also amused to see this flag flying above a stall selling contact lenses!

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

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.