Peter Kreet Art: salvaged art by Peter Kreet

Thursday, June 9, 2011

From the Coalface

"Alice's Cupboard"
Construction by Peter Kreet from the Salvaged Show 590x630 $500

Alice's cupboard down which she had ran to arrive at wonderland and experience a new world.
Constructed out of found objects and used without modification.

I realise I must resist the temptation of allowing these postings to become too serious. On a lighter note last
week was a pain. Firstly there has been the weather, more or less very Irish ,showers followed by heavy rain, wind up to 100kh per hour along with a temperature of around 8 to 10 degrees. On the bright side the rain drops gathering around the olive leaves shining like stars in a night sky all very lovely. When the fruit will ripen only the gods know, for the moment the only company they have is the mist slowly drifting through the grove. It is all very romantic and spiritual. Some varieties are starting to show colour, I have covered the trees with shining things like a Christmas tree to ward off the birds. Not that they eat the fruit they simply pick causing them to drop to the ground, unprocessed olives are unpalatable but no one has told the birds so the ground becomes covered in fruit like confetti at a wedding.

In between showers I have been rushing out pruning the odd grape vine here and there so I have finished four rows, then into the studio to put a few more dabs of paint on the portrait I'm painting. This painting is developing in an entirely new style for me and I am quite pleased with the direction for now. Against this backdrop I have been trying to get work to two exhibitions, one called Salvaged, work made from discarded objects, two of these works accompany this blog. The other is a landscape show up at Swansea on the east coast. I had intended driving up myself but the weather was so bad I had to run around looking for a carrier. It was just as well for water was running over the road in places and there was enough firewood on the highway to keep the average household going for a year.

On my way back from negotiating the freighting of the paintings, I was surprised to come across an old man feeding a large flock roosters on the highway. There was certainly a large selection to meet every taste, white, brown and everything in between. I assume they are all the discards from various suburban back yards , the owners of which have fallen foul of there neighbours. No doubt they could not bring themselves to put the roosters into the pot.

Finally I had to collect the work from the Salvaged Show, much to my surprise over nine hundred people passed through over the few days the exhibition was on. Just goes to show how creative activity at all levels has a great commercial potential every one concerned seemed pleased.

"Honey Bouquet"
Construction made from fencing timber old , a bee honey frame and timber off cuts.
$750.

Monday, April 11, 2011

The Wall (in homage to the packaging industry)

I have attempted to draw peoples attention to the huge waste of physical material used by the packaging industry. Every thing seems to be prepacked whether needed or not. In the construction of this wall I have reassembled various packing parts to form new molds and then cast them in concrete. "The Wall "is the result to date ,a multi faceted textured relief sculpture. Everything has been used when it comes to hand, egg containers, computer molds, biscuit boxes, wine storage boxes even containers from lamp shops. I hope you like it, the only reason likely to halt its progress is if the world runs out of packaging and that seem highly unlikely. At first the earth bank was retained by laying hundreds of wine bottles on their side.

However when my small grandsons started eying a bottle retaining wall with a glint in their eye that said ,"lets see how many we can hit and break with stones", I realised that a more permanent surface was needed, hence the birth of the "The Wall". I had been working with concrete making sculptures casting and reassembling them into free standing forms. It seemed to be an obvious solution to cast panels to encase the bottles. This was four years or so ago ,' The Wall" has been growing ever since depending on the weather and finances. Now standing two metres high in places an running some fifty metres in length and still growing.