#repurporsed

Conservators Ellen Nigro, Natalya Swanson, and Kate Wight Tyler discuss the use of repurposed and recycled materials in artwork and the overlap between Environmental and Art Conservation in this conversation inspired by Earth Day.

KWT: As themes like consumption and climate change are increasingly addressed by artists, we see more use of recycled, reclaimed, discarded, and degradable materials in their work. How has this evolved our role as conservators?

NS: Sustainability-themed art is challenging conservators to adapt our practices, partially because repurposed, reclaimed, and recycled materials tend to be more fragile and often require innovative solutions to preserve signs of use, and partially because it raises bigger concerns about the sustainability of our materials and practices. 

El Anatsui’s fabric-like metal tapestries made of recycled liquor-bottle caps and wrappers present interesting challenges. Every time the artwork is installed it is formed into a new shape. Variability is a defining feature of these works, but also requires a lot of handling which wears on the recycled metal tabs. Our conservation strategy includes attaching mesh onto the back of the artwork, which redistributes the weight off the metal tabs without restricting future iterations of the artwork. By using recycled materials and employing local community members to help construct the tapestries, El Anatsui not only comments on consumption and waste practices, but literalizes a foundational sustainability principle of prioritizing community well-being when making decisions. The more I work on this project, the more I wonder how conservators can embed sustainability values into our practices.

EN: The artwork cycle by Hugo McCloud is a collage made of single-use plastic bags adhered to a plywood panel. As a paintings conservator, working with the McCloud has been a different project than what I am used to, since there isn’t any paint used in the artwork. It was an opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues in objects conservation, especially Kate Wight Tyler. Although my education included lessons on plastics and plastic degradation, I haven’t thought about them in a while!  Having conversations with Kate really helped me understand the degradation that may happen in this work.

KWT: When components creating an artwork are made for different purposes or already had a use-life it can complicate the terms of preservation. How does caring for these works reiterate and/or contradict the message the artist is trying to achieve?

EN: Cycle is part of a series where McCloud depicts workers in developing countries moving large amounts of materials, often in plastic bags. These works address class, labor, resources, and how they are all intertwined on a global scale. They call attention to the prevalence of plastic in our lives and throughout trade systems.

In this work, as well as others in the series, McCloud uses new bags and plastic sheeting in these works instead of upcycling materials. By doing this, I think he reiterates and highlights the message that plastic is present in many aspects of our lives and throughout global trade. It seems that McCloud wants to make an environmentalist statement by calling attention to the pervasiveness of plastic in the world, but by using new plastic, he is actively participating in the use of single-use materials and contradicting the environmentalist message.

Caring for this work of art involves gathering information from the artist through a questionnaire or an interview to learn about how he views degradation in his work. As conservators, we are trained to decrease the chance of physical change in an object, however, this is not always the best approach for treating works by artists that value degradation or change in the work’s aesthetic over time. We are still in the process of gathering this information. For example, if Hugo McCloud prefers for his work to remain as pristine as possible, we may implement preventive conservation measures like glazing to protect the surface from light, humidity, dust, and other pollutants. However, if he values degradation of the plastic, then we may take a more passive approach to the care of this work.

NS: I’ve been thinking about the question of artist intent in regards to the El Anatsui a lot, and wonder to what extent his emphasis on intersectional environmentalism (a term used synonymously with “sustainability” that only differs in the sense that it underscores the intersectional nature of sustainability work, rather than relegating it to the environmental sector) should affect our decisions as conservators.

Unlike the McCloud piece, El Anatsui’s Black Box embodies sustainable decision making in all aspects, from sourcing recycled materials to employing locals to create the works. Because of this, I’ve been feeling conflicted about our decision to use plastic mesh in our conservation treatment. Like all decisions, the rationale behind our choice was complicated: we needed to use a flexible but strong material that won’t change the physical properties of the artwork; we also wanted to use something that has a long lifetime, so we won’t have to redo the treatment in a few years. The plastic mesh meets all these criteria, but conflicts with the message El Anatsui communicates by making these works.

When conserving conceptual art, conservators sometimes have to make compromises with physical elements to ensure they are preserving what’s important (the concept). It feels like we are grappling with a similar type of problem with sustainability-themed artworks.

KWT: Art Conservation is sometimes confused with Environmental Conservation. In what ways are they connected and how do they differ?

NS: This is a challenging question. Both heritage and environmental conservation are based on the fundamental belief in caring for valued and shared heritage. Both fields are scientifically-oriented professions that use a similar technical language - and although we both use terms like “restoration,” “preservation,” and “conservation,” we mean very different things when we use these terms! Also, both professions believe in and practice collaborative interdisciplinary work. 

Perhaps one reason why there are not more overlaps is because our guiding principles are significantly different: environmental conservationists believe in a holistic approach to community well-being achieved through balancing future and present needs; art conservation is primarily concerned with the long-term preservation of cultural property. Sustainability work has shifted away from an expert-driven decision making model, while this is still the dominant approach in heritage conservation. Over the past few years, the boundaries between our profession have gotten more blurry as heritage conservators realize that preservation of the natural environment is critical to long-term care of tangible heritage. We’re still working on how to integrate this thinking into our “best practices,” but there’s widespread agreement that we can begin by creating more space for collaborations and candid dialogue with our environmental conservation colleagues. 

EN: As I have worked on the McCloud, I’ve been struck by the difference in how conservators think about plastic degradation versus how environmentalists view it. While the two fields agree on the science of plastic degradation, what is perceived as acceptable or unacceptable is quite different. In the context of art conservation, plastic is a very delicate material and one that easily degrades through exposure to ambient light, humidity, and temperature, and something that may start to change in a relatively short period of time, affecting the function and/or aesthetic of a collection object. However, environmentalists express concern over the timeline of plastic degradation, and highlight that the plastic may not fully decompose for hundreds of years. The two fields have very different ideas about what timeline for degradation is acceptable.