Plastic

Acrylic paint is made from plastic and has played an exciting role in different styles of modern art. American pop artist Andy Warhol used acrylic paints to print images of Marilyn Monroe while Irish artist Robert Ballagh used acrylic to create pop art inspired by historic paintings. Lee Krasner created emotionally charged abstract paintings using black, white and ochre acrylic paints after the death of her husband, Jackson Pollock, the famous abstract expressionist artist who made his work by dripping paint onto his canvases. Lee could not sleep and she painted at night in her barn. She said "My painting is so autobiographical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it." 

Artists have made work from what we might think of as plastic rubbish. Nigerian artist Ifeoma U. Anyaeji creates her Plasto-Art using plastic bags and bottles. She uses a traditional hair-plaiting technique called Threading as well as weaving skills to create sculptures. Tara Donovan is an American artist who transforms everyday objects in her work. In one piece, she used hundreds of thousands of plastic cups stacked at different heights to create the illusion of rolling waves or flowing clouds. Artist Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture EMBANKMENT took a different type of rubbish and made it into plastic. She cast old cardboard boxes in plaster and then had them remade in plastic. She stacked them messy and organised stacks to fill the huge Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London.

Words by Helena Hunt