Abundance, Excess, Waste

Abstract

Rox De Luca is a visual artist based in Sydney, Australia.  Her recent work focuses on the concepts of abundance, excess and waste. These concerns translate directly into vibrant and colourful garlands that she constructs from discarded plastics collected on Bondi Beach where she lives. The process of collecting is fastidious, as is the process of sorting and grading the plastics by colour and size. This initial gathering and sorting process is followed by threading the components onto strings of wire. When completed, these assemblages stand in stark contrast to the ease of disposability associated with the materials that arrive on the shoreline as evidence of our collective human neglect and destruction of the environment around us. The contrast is heightened by the fact that the constructed garlands embody the paradoxical beauty of our plastic waste byproducts, while also evoking the ways by which those byproducts similarly accumulate in randomly assorted patterns across the oceans and beaches of the planet.