During a lecture given by Michael Pinksy in 2020 at the University of East London, Michael asked us to imagine how long it would take to fill our homes with all the delivery boxes we received if we didn’t flatten them and recycle them. This thought really scared me and during lockdown is something that I have been increasingly conscious of – choosing not to go to the shops (when allowed) and having everything delivered, it wouldn’t take long for my home to be overrun with boxes. Truth be told, I should have started collecting the cardboard packaging boxes from the beginning of the first lockdown – but who knew we’d still be in a series of lockdowns a year later? However, in the last few weeks I’ve been keeping them, even the pizza boxes and am starting to think about how I can utilise them in art. This is probably the first time that I feel my work is a direct comment on the environment.
Inspired by the New Zealand born, Australian artist, Rosalie Gasgoine (1917-1999), who used the found object, such as drinks crates, to create landscape assemblages that resemble quilts, I am experimenting with the idea of stitching together cardboard to create a scrappy quilt. I am approaching this in 2 ways: the first to create a ‘log-cabin’ type of quilt that will be cut on angles and reassembled in a scrappy fashion; the second is to try a create a more sculptural quilt using triangles and scraps of cardboard to enable it to bend and take different forms. I will continue to work on both to see where they take me.