Mass Reduction Exhibition - Melbourne Design Week 2022

Thursday, March 17, 2022 to Friday, June 3, 2022

Mass Reduction presents the work of artists and designers who through playful transformation of textile remnants and interrogation of linear modes of textile consumption offer innovative creative design approaches to confronting textile waste.

These works provide an antithesis to heedless textile production by championing mending and embracing wear and tear, privileging waste materials in design, slow process and repurposing and reusing textile waste. As well as through material choices, many artists employ a theoretical investigation into how we create and consume textiles and invite reflection on the value of post-consumer materials.

Presented as part of Melbourne Design Week, ‘Mass Reduction’ speaks to broader concerns around the waste created by the textile and apparel industries and current modes of ‘end-of-life' resource consumption. This exhibition promotes rethinking design process and material choices, reduce environmental impact and posit the transformation of textile waste to an even higher value textile product.

Artists: Eileen Braybrook (VIC), Aaron Billings (VIC), Elise Cakebread (VIC), Aphra Cheesman (VIC), Joanna Fowles (NSW), Blake Griffiths (NSW), Eloise Rapp (NSW), RaasLeela (INDIA), Reiko Sudo/NUNO (JPN) and Lisa Waup (Gunditjmara/Torres Strait Islander/VIC).

Dyevert shirt - Wins the Northern Beaches Environmental Art Prize 2021

Delighted to be the recipient of the inaugural Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize.

Thank you to everyone especially my co-collaborator Nina Smith for realising such a beautifully crafted garment.

The shirt utilises food waste and zero waste pattern cutting techniques to reimagine overlooked waste materials. The DYEVERT shirt demonstrates the potential of sustainable practice within textiles by applying circular design processes. I identified waste streams transforming discarded food waste into a dye resource to colour the shirt. Each stripe in the shirt is hand-painted using a traditional textile technique revealing multiple colours after dyeing the cloth in vegetal waste. Nina Smith then applied zero-waste pattern techniques to minimise waste in the garment design and construction process.

Both designers are responding to the systemic issues of fast fashion and the landfill of textiles. The ongoing collaboration demonstrates a less impactful garment that can be recoloured multiple times with other food waste to reactivate the stripes. The garment can eventually return to the earth and decompose.

Untapped resource - Coffee Grounds. Turning waste into a resource for natural dyeing.

Untapped resource: coffee grounds. Turning waste into a resource for natural dyeing.
I’m thinking about the food waste in my local area in particular the university I tutor at and it’s local coffee shops. Coffee ground waste is immense, we only have to think about how much coffee the population consumes and then imagine this on a global scale.

The cafe upstairs from my workplace uses kilos and kilos of coffee each day. How can we divert this and use this resource? In one day we reclaimed a FIFTEEN litre bucket full of used grounds that would just go into landfill and won’t be composted. Instead we are trying to divert a small amount of this waste in a local trial to see haw we can use it as a natural fabric dye.

How could we upscale this on a larger scale? Utilise the dye qualities and then responsibly compost afterwards?