Bella Topa
Plastic bottles knitted and crocheted
My work is centred around the materiality of everyday, common-place and mass-produced objects. I engage with these materials – in this case, plastic bottles - to create work that highlights the liminal spaces in our lives. The liminal is a space between spaces, a boundary between two points in time. It is a mid-structure between structures that is simultaneously there and not there. It is the place between dreaming and waking, consciousness and unconsciousness, that we feel but cannot see.
Often community sourced, I work with a material until I can adapt it to be almost unrecognisable from its original form. Despite the structure and process that I impose on the bottles, they determine the final outcome; the way the work bends and hangs in space. My work is a constant collaboration with the active matter of the plastic and how much it will allow itself to be transformed, much as the liminal only allows us to glimpse and feel its presence as it sees fit.
Currently my work uses plastic bottles which I gather, strip, and knit. I then employ traditional textiles techniques such as knitting, crochet, and netting in their transformation. I find these labour-intensive processes emphasise our human connection to these discarded materials, bringing the liminal to the surface of our awareness in a more personal way.
Often community sourced, I work with a material until I can adapt it to be almost unrecognisable from its original form. Despite the structure and process that I impose on the bottles, they determine the final outcome; the way the work bends and hangs in space. My work is a constant collaboration with the active matter of the plastic and how much it will allow itself to be transformed, much as the liminal only allows us to glimpse and feel its presence as it sees fit.
Currently my work uses plastic bottles which I gather, strip, and knit. I then employ traditional textiles techniques such as knitting, crochet, and netting in their transformation. I find these labour-intensive processes emphasise our human connection to these discarded materials, bringing the liminal to the surface of our awareness in a more personal way.