Environmental artists exhibit remarkable creativity with recycled material

The current “Own Your Rubbish” art exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in the capital attests to the astonishing work evolving from degenerated objects. A number of artifacts were displayed using remelted aluminium scrap.

An exquisite “Symbolic Installation Walkway” which is a brainchild of Laurie Macpherson representing the main rubbish categories at home and globally stands tall and peacefully in the main entrance of the Gallery with an aluminium frame, elegant suspended decorations of cut-offs from bottoms of plastic bottles of your soft drinks, several wine bottles of colour rising to the dome in an arc constructional section, beautiful colourful ceiling decorated with full sized soft drink plastic bottles and VHS video cassette ribbons, cut and flattened soda cans and plastic woven sections to highlight a few.

On some of the vertical square tubes of the aluminium structure are sizable plastic discs of colour printed with statistical info on the goodness of recycling and the adverse impact of pollutants on the environment.

The info included that “Recycling half of the world’s paper will save 20 million acres of forest”, “About 75 percent of all aluminium ever made is still in use”, “That jacket you are wearing, the sleeping bag you use for camping, the fleece jacket that keeps you warm, or the carpets in your home are made from recycled PET plastic bottles”, and “In VHS” peak sales year – 2001 – there was enough video tape stock manufactured to reach from the earth to the moon more than 987 times and so on.

There are also a number of posters stuck caring various info about the positives of recycling and the negatives of pollution on the globe.