Alison McDONALD
b.1962 Australia
R.R.R. (as in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) 2012-2015
Hand cut and coloured recycled PET plastic, silver-coated wire
68 x 20 x 38 cm
Collection of the artist
Photograph: Michael Marzik
McDonald has stated “this work began while I was on an artist residency in Aberystwyth, Wales. It was extremely complex to create and was made over three cold months, in a warm Welsh artist studio. I worked for many uninterrupted hours. It was bliss.”
The artwork was originally titled Choker. McDonald wanted it to look like an oversized piece of jewellery, a choker necklace. The sculpture also played on the idea that it was made of rubbish that ‘choked’ our waterways. The sculptor wasn’t completely happy with the title and renamed it to R.R.R. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) which relates to the chasing arrows that form our recycling symbol and to the Möbius Strip.
The Möbius Strip is a one-sided surface that can be constructed by affixing the ends of a rectangular strip after first having given one of the ends a one-half twist. This space displays interesting properties, such as having only one side and remaining in one piece when split down the middle. The features of the strip were discovered simultaneously in 1858 by two German mathematicians, August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing.
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