Plastic-free Kandos Drop-in Workshop

workshop at wayout

Sunday 12 June 11am – 2pm

Come along to our workshop. It’s open to everyone including families with children 4 years and over. Using jewellery-like techniques make your own distinctive garland to take home or to leave behind to gift to others, while chatting about plastics in our lives. Led by renowned plastics artist Rox De Luca.

Enjoy the Plastic-free Kandos exhibition and meet Sister GlitterNullius in this hands-on workshop using colourful found plastics.

Facebook event here.

A Message from Plastic Free July®

plastic free july book cover

Back in 2020 when we were working on the Plastic-free Biennale project for NIRIN, a group of us met with Rebecca Prince Ruiz, the founder of Plastic Free July®.

Amber Jones made a podcast from that conversation, which you can listen to here.

We’ve stayed in touch with Rebecca, and she has kindly recorded a message for us to play at the launch of our Plastic-free Kandos exhibition at WAYOUT Artspace on 11 June 2022.

You can listen to Rebecca’s short and inspiring message here:

…and below is a transcription of the text from that message:

Hello it’s Rebecca Prince-Ruiz here from Plastic Free July®.

I’m really delighted to welcome everyone to the launch of the Plastic-free Kandos exhibition.

It could not be more timely to bring people together, to grapple with this issue of how we can best manage the problem of plastics in our everyday lives.

This is a truly current pandemic.

We know that plastics have been found everywhere in the environment from the deepest ocean trenches to the top of the mountains, it’s harming our wildlife, it’s in our bodies.

It is everywhere.

This exhibition is an opportunity to share your plastic stories and reconsider your own relationship to plastics.

Plastic-free July® is coming up and it’s a great time to look at the plastic in your life and think about the choices that you can make to do things differently.

Earlier this year the United Nations Environment Assembly Member States unanimously agreed to create a historic global treaty to end plastic pollution.

On these complex environmental issues we need to think globally and act locally.

Please enjoy this exhibition and take a moment to consider the work of these incredible artists challenging us to rethink what we do and how we can make a difference.

Thank you.

Rebecca Prince-Ruiz (founder of the Plastic Free Foundation)

Plastic Free July®

Announcing Plastic-free Kandos!

Plastic-free Kandos flyer - 2022

After a short pandemicky hiatus, the team that brought you Plastic-free Biennale is back! We’re taking the show to WAYOUT artspace in Kandos, with an expanded crew. Collaborating on the new Plastic-free Kandos project are the following legends: Juundaal Strang-Yettica, Rox De Luca, Amber Jones, Kim Williams, Lucas Ihlein, and Lilli Rodriguez-Pang.

The exhibition includes videos, sculptures, performances, and installations, with guest artists including MC Nannarchy and the Kandos Ukulele group. There are workshops too!

Click on this link for the full media-release about the project.

We’ll also be updated on Instagram @plasticfreekandos

New and Sustainable Materials Expo

Bravo Biennale of Sydney. In the last couple of years the organisation, under the leadership of Barbara Moore, has continued its push to transform the festival’s environmental choices.

First, the Biennale appointed Jose Roca as the 2022 artistic director. His curatorial vision connects with many of the ideas we developed with the Biennale staff members during our time as “artistic consultants” on the NIRIN 2020 Biennale of Sydney. You can read more about Jose and his approach here.

Second, the Biennale followed up on some of the initiatives it began in a small way in 2020, partnering with Cicada Innovations to run the New and Sustainable Materials Challenge – an invitation to hear from creative innovators about how different materials and processes can change the way the artworld operates – to move from “business as usual biennale” towards something more akin to our “plastic-free biennale” provocation.

In the video above, you can hear from Sally Anne Williams (Cicada Innovations), Barbara Moore (Biennale of Sydney), and some of the incredible innovators who have pitched ideas for the New and Sustainable Materials Expo.

We are grateful to Barbara Moore for acknowledging the work of Plastic-free Biennale in leading to this new initiative. In her intro to the Expo, Barbara says:

Two years ago the Biennale of Sydney worked with two artists, Lucas Ihlein and Kim Williams, on a project called Plastic-free Biennale. Essentially from these two artists it was a provocation, an interrogation, and an honest look at our actions – from exhibition practices to personal choices that our team members were making on a daily basis. Their project was there to help us figure out what we wanted to do better, and it held us accountable. And the thing is once you learn something you can’t unlearn it, you have to keep going. Culture shifts, and sometimes it needs to take a giant leap forward.

Plastic-free Biennale at Goulburn Regional Gallery

plastic assemblage for goulburn

A small selection of works from Plastic-free Biennale is on show at Goulburn Regional Gallery from 13 September to 23 October 2021.

The above image shows a new work created for the exhibition, assembled on site by Goulburn’s excellent Sally O’Neill. Click on the image to see it very big! Thanks to fab curator Hannah Gee.