How can craft clean up its act? Some makers have focused on making their studio practice greener to reduce their ecological impact, while others have been giving waste material a second life. Similarly, a growing mass of craftspeople – backed by designers, scientists, engineers and investors – are looking to biodesign. Whatever the solution, it’s a pressing concern that is increasingly surfacing in the work of makers. Here are six artists exploring sustainability in craft at Collect art fair this year.
Zoe Robertson (House on Mars), salvaged plastic
Jewellery artist and plasticsmith Zoe Robertson has developed an interest in salvaged plastics in recent years. At Collect 2021, she will debut a brand-new series of vessels, entitled Grain, using a technique developed for a previous body of work RE:animate (2016), that will also feature at the fair. In her process, remnants of previous works are granulated before being thermoformed via fusing and pressed into new material. This laminated flat sheet is then vacuumed-formed to create three-dimensional objects, which are finely sanded to penetrate the coloured layers and reveal unexpected patterns.