The piece was hand crocheted by Tina Fox from almost 800 donated and scavenged grey plastic bags that were still being used at Woolworths supermarkets at the time.

 

The site specific outdoor artwork utilized traditional craft techniques in a modern way reflecting on the modern dependancy on fossil fuels and the coal history of the Waverton Coal Loader site.

 

Plastics are an important byproduct of the coal and energy process. Our love-hate relationship with plastics surfaces has a loud and politically correct distaste with an unspoken and insatiable material desire. The dichotomy of the man-made often goes hand in hand with our issues around the mass produced. Repetition, bulk and factory production are often cited as negative yet our demands for cheap, fast and plentiful are not subsiding.

 

Our current reliance on plastics is obvious but the nature and cost of plastics production will change over time as oil and coal resources dwindle. How will this affect our relationship with plastic? 

 

HOME SWEET PLASTIC’  takes the ‘throw away’, grey, thin and unspectacular supermarket plastic bag and turns it into a work of  beauty and reflection of crochet art. As society scoffs at plastics and mass production, in a contradictory stance, it underrates DIY and craft. Why ‘Make Do and Mend’ when ‘You can have it all’? My work uses traditional crochet and cross stitch techniques to breath new life into the disposable. Romantic notions of home and craft are merged with the disposable and utilitarian.

In an unexpected twist on traditional techniques the plastic bag cross stitch sampler is ‘super-sized’ and placed outdoors. Modern craft is a force to be reckoned with.