Details

Size: 30cm wide x 40cm high wall hanging; 30cmm deep.
Materials: Scrap acrylic, domestic & industrial fragments, silicone bathroom caulk. Figure is car battery terminal cleaner, springs, bike brake blocks, scraps.
Date: 2021.
Note: requires mains power for lights.

Salvaged Art Exhibition Kingston 2021

I made I Made It Myself for a recycled art show held in Kingston in 2021. The theme was “Messages of Hope” and the direction was to make a mailbox.

Here’s the artist’s description I wrote:

The happy fellow putting the finishing touches to his mailbox has had enough of doom and 
gloom, assembling his mailbox from materials at hand, the castoffs of our mad throwaway 
society: parts of smashed appliances, last year’s must-have techno-toys, unknown 
fragments from a drawer, the detritus of shed and garage. Finding some broken Christmas
lights, he's illuminated his mailbox hoping to attract some gentle moth-like Hopeful 
Messages.

He's quite proud that all parts are reused, saved from a one-way trip to the tip, reducing 
the impacts of fossil fuels, before the parts resurface in the coming centuries as 
microplastics & pollutants.

I was rather pleased that I won the open award, here’s me & the Mayor Paula Wreidt at the opening.

Materials

The box is made of scrap clear acrylic glued together. I have yet to find a good glue for acrylic, even bathroom silicone (the sort that smells like ants) doesn’t seem to hold very well. I probably should have sanded it first. I’ve fixed it a few times. Onto this I glued lots of fragments from my bits box, including fragments of a barbie doll, like the arms and the bum. On top there’s a little man putting the finishing touches to his creation. He’s quite proud that he built it himself, out of junk.

The lightshow inside is made from a string of LEDs from Aliexpress that I bought to make a desklamp, unfortunately they were far too dim and were incapable of producing a white light that does not give a headache. However they are perfect for a gentle lightshow if the colour is dialed down a bit. I used a cheap little microcontroller to drive the LED string, its got about enough brains to run a toaster so it can do a dozen LEDs no problem.

Reception

I like going to the openings, I like to loiter and see how people react to my creations. As usual people had lots of fun recognising things reused as fragments “Oh that’s a ….”. Kids especially like the idea of sticking lots of things together. One mother did accuse me of being a bit creepy with the use of doll parts, but I don’t think her opinion was shared by her daughter who ran off to show her friend the doll’s bum stuck to the side, with lots of giggles.

Video Walkaround