From the Series
Working in the space between art and craft, Nic Fredman spends a lot of time walking along the beach collecting plastic from the “alarming tide of plastic flotsam that now makes up part of the ocean”. He also looks out for crushed cans and bottle tops on roadsides and verges.
Fredman sees these waste objects as art pieces, sculptural and “shamelessly decorative with the added pleasure of being functional”. He uses these materials in a variety of ways to create interesting decorative pieces, which are often very practical too.
The Curiosity Cabinet pictured here is constructed from plywood and festooned with a variety of reworked recycled material such as bottle tops, crushed drink cans, used golf tees and tidal plastic. The cabinet has 12 pull-out drawers, handy for storing peripheral items such as keys and sunglasses. Each drawer is faced with a distressed photographic image. The image is arbitrary, but referential to a place or time from the maker’s diary.
The Birds Nest Chandeliers are constructed from twigs and branches off Table Mountain, and decorated with beach plastic, used golf tees and any other bits, beads and bobs that float around the studio.
Interestingly Fredman has noticed a decrease in the amount of road rubbish – “perhaps a testimony to a ‘Cleaner City’ or the increase in value of recycling metal”.
