Writing - Text on the work

Future Fossils

In 1907, Leo Hendrik Baekeland created the first fully synthetic plastic. Dubbed The Material of a Thousand Uses, Bakelite was easily mass-produced into desirable products with accessible consumer price-tags. In the 1930s, the development of Perspex, polyethylene, Nylon, Vinyl and Teflon followed Baekeland’s invention. Post-war manufacturing preferred these cheap and convenient plastics over glass, metal and paper. The “Age of Plastic” was ushered in with enthusiasm, but this change quickly led to a dark legacy for these promising new materials.

In Anya Beaumont’s studio, overflowing bags of containers reveal humanity’s reliance on single-use plastics. Once filled with household cleaning products, toiletries and food produce, the discarded items are piled up in a succession of punchy pinks, fluorescent yellows and brilliant blues. Images from Greenpeace and the National Geographic are called to mind. Children in the Philippines play among piles of plastic, and the UK’s recycling washes up on the shores of Malaysia.

Yet, in the artist’s studio these problematic vessels take on the identity of a creative medium, in the manner of paints in a painter’s studio, or fabrics for an upholsterer. Each bottle or tub has potential to be just the right colour, shape or malleability for the next creation. Once selected, it is carefully cut to shape and manipulated into a completely new form. In Anya’s studio, discarded plastics await a second life.

Anya’s exploration of pre-used plastics as a creative medium began in 2019, with the inclusion of a small sculpture in the exhibition Flourish at Pound Arts. For the first time, Anya’s intricate contemporary- baroque style was transformed through the smooth sheen and block colours of recycled plastic. This new approach was fully realised in 2023 with the completion of The Four, from the ongoing Hopeful Monsters series. Made entirely from pre-used plastics, and referring to the four elements, these sculptures signal to human abuses of the planet. Yet The Four are not here to admonish us. Vibrant

and playful, they roll in on their wheels of discarded kids’ toys, bringing hope for a better future.

The most recent additions to the Hopeful Monsters series move away from a solely environmental narrative. In The Mother, The Promise and The Wish, repurposed domestic furniture and references to vessels suggest anxieties bound up with pregnancy and motherhood. For Anya, feelings of unease are connected with her fear of birds. Feathers are made from recycled shower gel bottles of deep black tones, which reflect light in a manner suggesting the movement of a slick glossy coat. Dark, surreal and bodily, these pieces are imbued with an uncomfortable, psychological presence.

Anya’s ability to make plastic appear to live and breathe is exemplified by the series that inspires the exhibition’s title. The Future Fossils are vibrant symphonies of colour and organic forms, which seemingly pulsate with life. Yet they are contained within bell jars, calling to mind a Victorian vogue for collecting and displaying natural history specimens. This presentation provokes questions about what we choose to conserve, and what is preserved by its very nature. It asks how this “Age of Plastic” will be remembered and looked upon in the future. At the same time, we are reminded that the power to decide has somewhat been forfeited. After all, a key attribute that made plastics so desirable at the beginning of the 20th Century, is the very thing that makes them so problematic today: their durability.

Microplastics are integrated within layers of earth, becoming fossilised and forming a new geological epoch defined by human impact on the earth’s composition. That plastics play a part in the fossils of the future is inevitable. By transforming polymer carcasses into vibrant baroque forms, and presenting them as specimens to be studied, Anya invites us to explore the role of plastics in the narrative of our time, and reveals intersections between environmental ethics, geology and creative practice.

Text by Katie Ackrill, Curator

Re-Vision Exhibition

At first glance I see stark contrasts; multicoloured growths sprawling up monotone columns, intricate handcraft alongside peeling paintwork, organic sculptural wreaths hanging in concrete jungles. I blink and there are heads of worldly bearded figures, short-legged gremlins, the tails of fantastical sea creatures. As my eyes focus on the intricate patterns of the paper cut sculptures I am hypnotised by their detail, following each curve and crevice as it undulates over the 1940s stonework upon which it has taken temporary residence.

Artists have been applauded for centuries for their ability to see something new in the otherwise ordinary, introducing new ideas and ways of looking. By presenting a radical new impression of the world and reframing the everyday, some are able to make the ordinary extraordinary and draw attention to what otherwise might go unnoticed. In a contemporary context this ability to re-frame or revise a place is a well known formula for urban regeneration; artists move to a formerly overlooked area and a creative community grows followed by cultural tourists and often increased property prices. Artists have a unique ability to make use of their local resources to offer an alternative viewpoint on a place and to question its perceived value and beauty.

For Re-vision Beaumont has looked again at Muswell Hill where she lives and works. Following a recent mapping project in the area, funded by Arts Council England, the artist has created new paper sculptures which she has then photographed in the locale. This area of London is not a place that seems overlooked, or in need of regeneration: its green spaces, village feel and views of the city make it a desirable location to live. Beginning with this more celebrated view, Beaumont photographed Victorian architectural pediments on the area's well known Fortis Green Road and Broadway. She then involved the local community through a general call out for paper, a method she has used in previous work. The images of the stonework are then printed onto these collected drawings, receipts and letters, transposing their once grand elegance onto fragments of the lives of everyday residents. The artist then laboriously hand cuts the images and layers the resulting delicate paper, to slowly build organic ephemeral sculptures derived from elegant masonry.
The journey of these sculptures continues as Beaumont takes them back into the local area. Led by an appreciation for fine brickwork the artist photographs the sculptures in 1940s housing blocks and back road mews', away from the well trodden roads from which they were originally lifted. A new perspective on what would otherwise be familiar sites is presented in the resulting giclee prints. The alien paper column signposts the eye to carefully composed doorways and inviting sloped paths. It crawls up geometric stairways and neatly plants itself into overlooked corners whilst the circular wreath made from recycled paper celebrates incidental architectural features and textured tarmac. When the artist talks about this method of taking these transitory sculptures into the urban environment she recalls the strange glances, unpredictable weather and fruitful conversations encountered. The absurdity of her making process is subtly translated into the resulting images and it is this that disrupts and distorts our normal view of these otherwise unremarkable sites.
The paper sculptures are like punctuation in an urban landscape; juxtaposing past and present and making extraordinary otherwise everyday scenes the multi-layered images ask us to stop and look again at our own surroundings. By relocating historical fancy onto and then into the present everyday this series of photographs provide a gap in which to slow down and reconsider or revise how architecture, people, objects and design combine to define a place - what is it that makes them beautiful and how do they retain this value?'

Text by Alice Lobb,

Curator at the Barbican and art writer