Noosa Heads environmental artist and sculptor Angela van Boxtel is asking the Noosa community to help contribute to the making of her next sculpture.
Her new sculpture, which can float on the water and will be made entirely from plastic bottle caps, has been selected for Noosa’s Floating Land.
The ‘Singled Out’ creator is a prolific Dutch-Australian based artist and has made Noosa her home since July 2020.
She is hoping to continue her environmental educational work in an exciting new geographical area.
Her original and colourful art pieces always made from waste materials have been integral to pushing environmental topics about waste to the forefront in the Australian landscape.
The artist is famous for her plastic shopping bag bikinis made entirely from just that – plastic shopping bags – using only a crochet hook and scissors.
She is proud to have her first Teeny Greeny Plastic Bag Bikini acquired by the Manly Art Gallery and Museum for its historical museum collection of Fashion within Australia landscape since the start of the century.
Art is a great vehicle to talk about environmental issues and for most people it often is a first connection with the issue in a more conversational, non judgemental and threatening way.
The artist says her success was remarkable knowing she has no formal training in the arts.
“I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Media and Communications,” Angela said.
“Furthermore, my art is made entirely of rubbish. I just made it all up which is actually quite funny.”
Her work started when a group that cleaned up beaches regularly in Sydney’s Northern Beaches got her involved in cleaning up (10 years ago) and told her ‘We have to do something’.
Over the years she became extremely well educated on the topic of plastic pollution in the ocean, being a long distance ocean swimmer herself.
“If you recreate in the ocean, you have to look after it. It’s that simple,” she said.
Many people have often asked the artist, ‘Why does one plastic bag matter or one plastic bottle cap?’.
“My job as an artist is to have these people think differently to show them it does matter,” Angela said.
That’s why her sculptures always concentrate on one single waste material. So people can start looking differently at that one plastic bag, or one bottle lid.
Imagine 25 million Australian people thinking that way, that’s 25 million bottle caps. The artist wants people to be part of her art. Her sculpture is about connection in showing people what happens if all the bottle caps are combined.
The bottle caps then become a new ‘fabric’ and you will see their usefulness in a new way and realise that it’s not actually waste at all.
Angela’s biggest message is ‘Waste is a resource not yet explored’.
Her way of thinking fitted in like a glove with this year’s theme of the Floating Land named ‘At the Edge of Ideas’.
The Noosa Art Gallery will be a drop off point for plastic bottle caps. All plastic lids need to be washed and clean. All lids need to be plastic (so no corks, no metal lids of beer bottles and wine).
“There is also no clarity around the issue that bottle lids actually can be recycled in the recycle industry… which is an industry almost entirely absent in Australia,” Angela said.
“We recycle but where does it go? There is no transparency and trying to find answers is hard. Why are we so secretive about waste? Because mostly it’s a not so nice story at the other end as the simple truth is most of it ends up in landfill. It’s about time to go sit on that ‘edge of ideas’ and just talk, communicate and create new patterns of thinking.”
The artist hopes her outcome of the art piece ‘Singled Out’ will be that people will look differently at waste and actively engage in this topic.
She is hopeful along the lines of the young man who once told her, “I never read anything about the issue of plastic pollution until I saw a beautiful girl in a plastic bag crocheted bikini”.
Mission accomplished for the self made artist, maybe that Media and Communications degree came in handy after all.
For more information visit floatingland.org.au
