One person’s trash becomes a Kirribilli artist’s prize work

By James Mullan

Kirribilli based artist Claire Engkaninan Low won the Recycled/Reused Materials Award at this year’s Hornsby Shire Council’s Remagine Art Prize for her Monsters Are Real—painted on a skateboard, Engkaninan Low has always had creative skills and a love of art.

“When I was growing up it was a passion. I was the kind of kid whose art gets pinned up at the front of the school…. It fell by the wayside as I got older and I focussed more on writing both fiction and journalism,” she told the Sun.

At the time Claire was the editor of Total Girl magazine but moved on from that career.

As Claire started her current job in communications, she had been doing a daily drawing book which kept that artistic fire burning although she was no longer in a creative industry.

She then found her skill and love of art returning.

“Suddenly it all comes back to you and you feel amazing. It’s like a light has turned on in a old house. I couldn’t stop after that.” And she didn’t, picking painting back up while rediscovering her love of art.

While walking around Kirribilli, Claire stumbled upon a skateboard that had been left out for council pick up. A light bulb went off as Claire had been watching popular YouTube artist ‘Ten Hundred’ recently repurpose skate decks.

Once home the wheels were removed, surface sanded and primed but the difficult part was what to create on the canvas. Claire’s first go at it was based on a phrase she had in her mind “enjoy your burning utopia.” which was originally a baptist pastor’s line but she thought of it more in relation to climate change. This design had flames and devils but not the approval of the artist herself. She didn’t like it.

Then one day in discussion with her partner hanging scrolls came up which inspired Claire.

“I’m from a Chinese family and part Thai. If you are familiar with their (hanging scrolls) one of the very few landscapes that exist that are a hard vertical.”

This provided an ideal inspiration for the skateboard canvas as it is a similar long composition.

Further inspiration came from yet another council clean up find; an 80s magazine about the arts of Asia. In it was Ming Dynasty master Qiu Ying art work “Fording the Stream, After Liu Songnian”, a landscape piece featuring trees, a village and waterway.

Using this as a base she added monsters which “refer to the destructive forces around us that are so familiar they are part of the landscape.”

In her piece description Claire explained “To me, a monster is excessive consumerism that thrives on cold indifference to the fact that many of the things we buy are slave-made. The waste generated when these things are discarded - that’s another monster.”

You can understand why this work won the recycled art prize as not only were the materials recycled, but the art itself comments on the wasteful nature of modern society. Claire is passionate about reducing the negative impacts of over consumption.

“I want people to look at their waste and the items they don’t want and think ‘one more use, just one more use, what could that be?’”

Wordstep

Complete the list by changing one letter at a time to create a new word at each step.

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Quick Crossword

Chops

There may be more than one possible answer.

Codeword

Using the nine letters in the grid, how many words of four letters or more can you list? The centre letter must be included and each letter may only be used once. No colloquial or foreign words. No capitalised nouns, apostrophes or plural words ending in “s”.

WORD FIND No. 029

1 In which decade was Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building built?

2 What are the first names of ice-skating partners Torvill and Dean?

3 What is the term for an animal’s ability to severe an appendage, usually as a form of self-defence?

4 What was the 1920s slang term ‘Chicago typewriter’ reference to?

5 Who was US actor Humphrey Bogart married to at the time of his death in 1957?