Christopher Madden

consumerism

  • Milk bottle heads – sculpture from recycled rubbish

    Contemporary art - sculpture from recycled rubbish or junk - milk bottle heads

    Milk bottle heads
    Plastic milk bottles, ink. September 2018

    Plastic milk bottles with human heads drawn onto them.
    These heads are an example of art created from rubbish. Their recycled nature is partly an observation on our throw-away consumer culture.
    The bottles are surprisingly head-shaped, reminding me somewhat of various non-Western forms of sculpture. I particularly like the way that the milk bottle handles make very interesting and bizarre noses.
    I’m in the process of making several dozen of them, as their impact is increased as their numbers increase.

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  • Environmental art – heads created from discarded milk bottles

    contemporary environmental sculpture from consumer waste - sculptural head created from milk bottles

    Milkman

    Plastic milk bottle, ink    August 2018

    Slightly unsettling heads created from empty plastic milk bottles.

    Like many artists I have a habit of collecting waste and recycling it into works of art.
    The slightly sinister appearance of these heads, drawn as they are on post-consumer waste in the form of discarded plastic milk bottles, can be interpreted as a comment on the fact that we as humans are destroying the environment through (amongst other things) our profligate use of plastic consumer packaging (I’ve been producinng work concerned with environmental issues since the 1970s).
    The fact that the heads also resemble the type of craft-play objects produced by children can be interpreted as alluding to the western world’s current tendency towards a philosophy of consequence-denying pleasure seeking in which the adults in society fail to take responsibility for their actions beyond immediate self-gratification.

    contemporary environmental art sculpture created from consumer waste - heads created from plastic milk bottles

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