The Green exhibition is reviewed on behalf of craftscotland by Dale Idiens. 

Popular understanding of the term ‘green’ relates to reducing the human impact on the planet by the improvement of sustainability, and by the management of increasingly scarce resources, which can in turn involve recycling.

The eleven members of design-ED, a group of artists working in textiles, paper, ceramics, glass and metalwork, have focused in this exhibition on the concept of recycling and applied it not only to materials, but to techniques and to ideas, often working in collaboration and appropriating skills from each other. The outcome can be viewed as a series of experimental adventures which has affected each maker in different ways.

Claire Hillerby, for example, has always used recycled materials, particularly samples of handwriting and paper, in her complex, narrative jewellery. But the group dynamic has led her to extend this range, assembling collage panels, rather like story-boards, of old postcards, letters, envelopes, banknotes, playing cards, buttons and paperclips. The panels were used as the basis for transfer-printed fabric to cover cushions, and the panels then recycled again to make brooches, the oxidised silver mounts themselves made from long-hoarded scraps. She has also started to experiment with paper jewellery constructed from strips cut from old cash receipt books.

Some of the group extended their practice by taking on a new technique or material. Carol Sinclair, a ceramicist, has produced a whimsical mobile entitled ‘Calder to Colclough’ from items in an old china tea set, and carved and polished broken pieces of china to make necklaces, brooches and rings with added decorations of vintage costume jewellery. Her ‘cloud brooches’ which show in wear the white, inner side of part of a tea cup, with the pattern hidden on the reverse, and pearl or bead pendant ‘raindrops’, are unexpected and original.

Metalworker Meg Hamilton offers a striking wall piece assembled from the handles of old knives and forks, but turns to jewellery with her colourful and engaging flower and bird brooches cut from used Continental fruit packing crates, and uses the same material for a ‘tree’ installation.

Mairi Brown, a textile artist and professional dressmaker, generally uses embroidery for her decorative work. She collaborated with several other members of the group, making paper with Anna King to use in some of her fragile, translucent stomachers, adding woven wool off-cuts from James Donald to bags, and as her centrepiece creating “Does My Bum Look Big in This?”, a cream silk corset with, pinned inside, comments about women’s views (largely negative) on their own bodies.

Staying with her distinctive resin jewellery, Carla Edwards has extended her design repertoire by incorporating tiny scraps of floral patterned fabric into the resin forms, in some pieces even utilizing the print fabric to make the delicate supporting cords.

Costume designer Jeanette Sendler learned glassmaking and how to knit in order to make her sets of small glass plates associated with items of haberdashery from an old sewing box, and to create six aprons from recycled remnants of Shetland knitwear.  But her most startling exhibits are inspired by recycling her own work, a group of tree “skins” made from raw sheep wool and felt, dipped in paper pulp, and used in 2002 to cloak the trunks of trees in an arboretum. The “skins” were then subjected to further decay in a compost heap, and the marks of natural decay have inspired a series of rolled and unrolled felt and vellum “maps” marked with place names.

Several other makers have created new work by recycling waste products from their existing practice.

Ruth Morris of Roobedo shows seven outfits made of recycled off cuts of denim, cord and velvet, and incorporating reject wool scarves from James Donald, as well as second hand jumpers which she dyes, felts, and cuts in pieces to co-ordinate. Two evocative experimental print shawls are embellished with off cuts of Harris Tweed and machine embroidery, stitching old wives’ tales of the islands into the cloth. And a series of “Sea Anemones”, worn as brooches or as chokers, are made from tiny Harris Tweed off cuts, stitched and tumble- washed to achieve a soft, spongy consistency.

Inge Panneels also remains with her discipline of glass, producing two installations. ‘Ten Green Bottles’ is literally that, standing on a brick wall. Each bottle is inscribed with a ‘green’ statement e.g.” The energy saved in 2003 by recycling glass was enough to launch 10 space missions . Enclosed in a darkened space, “ Message in a Bottle” is a group of suspended clear glass domestic bottles and jars containing glass ‘worms’, or old test pieces, which are wrapped in strips of reflective paper. This is technically ambitious, and demonstrates the risks all artists take when experimenting, since the reflective paper fails to glow as required. But a group of translucent ice-green dishes and brooches in slumped glass, made from an old box of broken and discarded bottles destined for a landfill site, have mysterious depths.

Influenced by a recent visit to Japan, Anna King reveals the impact of this experience in several ways in her work. She recycles ideas derived from Japanese design, colour and decoration in some masterly tapestries, but her most surprising piece is an installation which at a distance might be mistaken for a patchwork quilt. “Wall of Baggies”, is a series of 120 identical small drawstring bags reinterpreting the style of bag used by Japanese women when wearing informal traditional dress. Anna has handsewn each bag from a different recycled fabric, many donated by friends, and added little attachments of ephemera, such as feathers, safety pins, tiny bottles, and dolls.

The reuse and reinvigoration of ideas is also behind the contributions of Fiona McIntosh of Tessuti and James Donald, although both seem to have engaged less with the process of the exhibition, partly because of time constraints. Fiona has borrowed from an old magazine knitting pattern the concept for a ’twist’, a reversible scarf or shoulder cape, to which she has added 1950’s style patterns, producing a clever and wearable garment with up to the minute fashion associations. James has married old yarns, some rescued from a skip in Galashiels in the mid 90’s, with former designs, which  led him to look anew at weave structures he had not used for some time in his richly textured wraps and scarves.

This skillfully displayed and well lit exhibition is fresh and engaging. The accompanying catalogue and DVD reinforce the impression of a group of highly creative individuals experimenting, collaborating, broadening their horizons, and in the process having fun. It is about recycling, but more than that the exhibition gives a fascinating insight into the ways in which artists work and develop.

Green is on at the Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XQ tel: 0141 548 2558 from 30 September to 11 November 2006.  Opening hours Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and Saturday 12 noon to 4pm. Admission free.  A two day conference with workshops is being held on 28 and 29 October 2006.  Booking deadline 21 October – details in opportunities.  Read our news story about the exhibition.

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