Peta Kruger’s ‘Used’ Art Series is Made with Thread from Discarded Soft Plastics.

Peta Kruger, Used (series), 2019 – 2020.
Needlepoint found plastics on framed twist canvas.

Adelaide-based artist and jeweller Peta Kruger redefines the waste matter of our material culture in her new body of needlepoint works. Otherwise discarded soft plastics are imbued with new value as Kruger responds to our current global plastic crisis.

For Kruger, a jeweller of over ten years, Used marks a departure from creating three-dimensionally in metal and paint. While expanding on her previous ideas such as the hierarchy of precious materials and the relationship between jewellery and textile Kruger now interrogates crucial environmental issues through her own weavings.

The plastic fibres woven throughout Used are salvaged food packaging, gift-wrapping and litter, occasionally collected via dumpster diving. After sanitising, these flexible plastics are cut into fine strips to create needlepoint threads. The texture and thickness of the material dictates the artist’s preparation.

Related: ‘Plastic Ocean’ by Thirza Schaap.

The unabridged material list of a neon pink work from this series reads more like a shopping list than visual art media: light green Coles Rice Cakes packet; dark blue The Athlete’s Foot retail bag; and Sanitarium Weetbix packets. By cataloguing the materials in this way, Kruger identifies that everyone in the supply chain is accountable for the yield and afterlife of plastic packaging – from producers to retailers to consumers.

Above all, Used is Kruger’s personal journey of reflection, atonement and commitment to the problem of plastic pollution. By incorporating techniques associated with “women’s work” Kruger contemplates how “the labour of stitching exhausts my body and concentrates my mind to a point where new insights are revealed.” She goes on to say: “The legacy of plastic is a story that will unfold for generations and it seems prudent to consider and organise this material for future readings, in this case according it the status of a finely woven historic tapestry.”

Peta Kruger: Used is currently showing at JamFactory, Adelaide until 22 November 2020.

[Images courtesy of JamFactory. Text courtesy of Rebecca Freezer/ JamFactory. Photography by Sam Roberts.]