Lucy McRae is a science fiction artist, filmmaker and inventor. ​Her work asks questions about the future of human existence by exploring the limits of the body, beauty, biotechnology and the self.  ​McRae uses the term ‘body architect’ to describe her creative practice. ​In 2007, McRae began collaborating with Dutch textile artist Bart Hess, who had just graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven. Hess said one day, ‘We should just experiment’. They used familiar materials that were cheap to buy: foam, toothpicks, stockings, balloons and grass​. They repeated them over the body to create  skins.  The images tell a story about the future of the body.

• What are the challenges faced by humans in the 21st Century? How might our human biology evolve and be augmented to meet these challenges?
• What happens when technology enters the body? Do we become it, does it become us, or do we become something new?
• What kind of environments might humans have to endure in the future? What can we do to prepare ourselves?

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Watermelon, 2015, is a video work by New Zealand artist Steve Carr which runs for over 30 minutes. In the work, two female hands systematically place rubber bands around a watermelon in real time until it becomes squashed and ultimately explodes under the pressure.

• How does this work utilise ideas of composition and other art/design elements and principles?
• How is the element of time important in this work? Describe how tension and anticipation play a part in this work.
• Why do you think the artist chose to use a watermelon? How might the work be different with another fruit or vegetable?

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Formafantasma is an Amsterdam-based design studio. Ore streams, 2016–17, draws our attention to the environmental and social impacts of our appetite for new technology and the consequences of the rare earth mineral trade and electronic waste. The project includes a range of office furniture, namely desk, chair, side table, light and cabinet, made from metals and materials reclaimed from discarded electronic devices. – The series also explores modernist design objectives, such as standardisation, universal style, efficiency and modularity.

• Do artists and designers have an ethical responsibility when creating works? What considerations do you believe artists and designers should think about in making their work? What problems in our world today most concern you?
• Brainstorm design ideas for an object you could create from everyday materials that effectively engages people with this problem.
• What materials do you see in our waste stream that you could incorporate into an artwork?

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In close collaboration with local indigenous artists, PET Lamp co-design unique, handwoven lampshades which reuse PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles. The project began as a way to raise awareness of the overuse of plastic bottles, and has evolved as a means to highlight the value of different indigenous or traditional weaving practices and their role in preserving culture and community, knowledge and tradition.
In 2016, The PET Lamp project formed a partnership with Bula’bula artists from the community of Ramingining in North East Arnhem Land. Bula’bula Arts is an Aboriginal owned and governed, not-for-profit organisation that aims to preserve and foster Yolngu culture. Yolgnu women have a strong tradition of weaving. Objects such as fish traps and nets, mats, string bags, baskets and dilly bags are traditionally made using materials harvested from plants such as pandanus, sandpalm and kurrajong, and coloured with natural dyes. Through the collaborative design process, they devised a way to join weavings, repurposing traditional Yolngu mats as PET Lamp chandeliers.
For the NGV project the Ramingining weavers created a large installation in which individual stories are woven together in a work that reflects both the landscape and kinship connections.

• Look at the project created by the Bula’bula artists. How does it reflect the landscape and culture of the artists?
• Is the project effective in raising awareness of the problem of PET plastic? In what ways?
• Design your own art project to raise awareness of the issues of plastic pollution. You might like to create your own PET Lamp chandelier. In doing so, see what materials you can find at home that celebrate your family, community, culture and traditions and start weaving!

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Sydney-based artist Justene Williams creates elaborate sets and costumes made from everyday objects. These are activated through performances which allude to the histories of various art movements and attempt to reconstruct the essence of lost images. These performances are recorded, edited and re-presented in the gallery space along with props and remnants from the performance.

• Justene Williams used found objects to create her video performative works. What are the different elements and stages does she describes going through to create her works of art?
• What objects can you identify in this work? How does the object’s previous use affect the meanings in the artwork?

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Melbourne-based artist, experimental musician and performer Nathan Gray is interested in the ways people interact with objects. His practice is process-based, often involving trial and error as he learns new processes and imposing limitations on himself by only utilising what is at hand. The outcomes manifest themselves as sculptures, performances and videos.

• What can you tell about an object by the sound it makes? Try tapping, banging, swiping a range of objects, of different sizes and materials. Try describing the sounds or get someone to guess what they are.
• How does the visual of how the sound is made add to the sound itself?
• How can setting rules for your artwork inspire creativity? What are some restrictions you are currently working with? How can you use these to benefit your artwork?

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Pip & Pop – the pseudonym of Perth-based artist Tanya Schultz – creates brightly coloured installations that celebrate the traditions of storytelling. Works by Pip & Pop encourage viewers to revisit the unbridled wonder associated with childhood through a dizzying array of materials. The artist combines glitter, stickers, washi tape and powdered sugar to create magical worlds inspired by fictional lands made of food, such as The Land of Cockaigne (a land of plenty in medieval myth). On days like this there are always rainbows, 2016, was a temporary site-specific installation created at the NGV, and an immersive, mythical landscape involving kaleidoscopic wallpaper and handcrafted sculptures.

• Food is often connected to nostalgia and memories, cake might remind you of birthdays, ice-cream of summer. Write a story of a memory that is triggered by a certain meal or food type, describe the scene to take in all the senses, how did it feel, sound, smell, look and importantly taste!
• Pip and Pop use coloured sugar and glitter and other eclectic to create magical fantastical landscapes. Can you use the food on your dinner plate to create a landscape? Take a photo before you devour the scene!

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We Make Carpets is a Dutch art collective that transforms everyday objects and materials into spectacular site-specific installations. Hands On: We Make Carpets for Kids was a series of installations created by the group for the 2017 NGV Triennial. Working with the power of numbers, thousands of household objects such as foam pool noodles, nylon rope, kitchen sponges and plastic pegs were carefully arranged to create impressive displays of brightly coloured patterns. The repetition of colours and shapes in these installations suggests the intricate patterns of a Persian carpet, and highlights the beauty that often goes unnoticed in everyday objects and materials.

• What makes something a pattern? Find some examples of patterns online or in your house and identify what art elements and principles are most important in each pattern.
• Why do you think the artists choose to work with the household objects like those you see used here? Consider the visual or other qualities that might have interested the artist?
• Some of the installations created by We Make Carpets were interactive, so visitors could use materials to create their own patterns. How does interactivity change our experience of an artwork as a viewer or a participant? What do you need to consider when creating a work of art like this?

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Jon Campbell is an artist who looks for treasure in Australia’s suburbs. Consisting of eighty-five souvenir teatowels, Dunno (T.Towels), 2012, reveals some of middle Australia’s endearing eccentricities and embarrassing aberrations. He has intervened with some of the tea towels, adding macho expressions and lyrics from 1970s Aussie punk band The Saints, but many others are presented as they were found. Generalised representations of Indigenous Australians and cultural objects, obscure tourist destinations and proud moments from Australia’s sporting history are all reflected in the selection. Though they might never have been designed as objects of contemplation, presented en-masse, the souvenir tea towels provide an insight into middle Australia’s subconscious.

• Find 3 objects in your house that are in some way Australian.
• What makes them literally or figuratively Australian? What image or idea of Australian culture do they represent?
• Ask yourself, how is your object like the Australia you know? Extend the metaphor as far as possible.
• Gather your objects together,present them in an array and photograph them.
• Give your artwork a title which reveals something about your ideas of Australian culture.

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Charlie Sofo documents everyday findings and happenings through his art practice. The video work 33 objects that can fit through the hole in my pocket comprises short vignettes in which the camera, locked on a shot of Sofo’s toes, documents random objects – a vegetable peeler, a lighter, a tube of glue – falling down his trouser leg and landing on the floor. The work questions notions of perceived and actual value, humourously critiquing criteria that claim to separate treasure from trash.

• Make a list of the everyday objects that you use during a day. Consider the value and importance of each object. What difference would it make to your life if you did not have this object?
• What stories do the objects we use tell about us? How do they do this?

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Rosalie Gascoigne recognises beauty in humble objects such as soft drink crates, linoleum, retro-reflective road signs, dried grasses and feathers. Collecting and arranging these items, often rescued from rubbish dumps, and scarred and faded by the ravages of weather, is an integral part of her practice. She transforms these discarded materials into sculptures, wall pieces and assemblages to capture the essence of things or an experience rather than conveying a literal representation.

• What materials or objects can you identify in Parrot morning? Why do you think Rosalie Gascoigne chose them and combined them in this way?
• What stories, ideas or feelings are suggested by this work and how?
• Collect some interesting discarded objects from your own environment. Select object that you find visually appealing and which convey something about your environment.
• Create an assemblage of these objects focusing on creating an interesting visual arrangement that connects the objects in a unified whole.

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Subodh Gupta was born in 1964 in the Indian province of Bihar, the poorest and least developed area of India. His practice celebrates the vestiges of everyday life for many Indians, elevating domestic objects to a position of spiritual worship. In a nod to the multitudes of India, Curry, 2006, brings together straightforward, comparatively small individual elements at such a scale that they transcend their everyday nature. Stainless steel bowls, plates and cups are cultural references to the modernisation and economic development of India in the twentieth century. Replacing kansa (or bell metal, a brittle bronze featuring a high proportion of tin), stainless steel came to transform the kitchen and eating utensils used in everyday life in India in the 1950s and 1960s.

• How does Gupta create a sense of harmony and balance in this artwork? Consider the choice of material (stainless steel), scale and placement of objects.
• Find objects in your household predominantly made of one material, e.g. fabric, metal or plastic.
• Experiment with creating a sculpture or installation piece using these objects. Consider the size and placement of objects in your artwork.
• What symbolic, historical or cultural significance does your artwork display?

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Since the 1970s, Elizabeth Gower has exhibited intricate collages composed from the detritus of everyday life. The artist collects images from junk mail, catalogues magazines, prints and packaging. She sorts and orders these by type and colour and arranges in rhythmic and geometric compositions that have a mesmeric formal beauty. The Chance or Design (1993-95) series from the mid-’90s focused on flora and fauna.

• Collect images of an everyday item from magazines, newspapers or catalogues. Sort the images by size, colour or style and use them to create a collage with a strong pattern or movement.
• Consider repetition and variety in the arrangement of objects in your collage.
• Aim to create an artwork where attention is focused on the pattern or effect you create, not on the images your collage is constructed from.

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In her plastic sculptures, Louise Paramor investigates the fundamental principles of modernism and references the visual landscape of the contemporary world. She has commented: ‘What makes these works distinctly of our time are the materials employed – industrial plastics, which are widely used in the manufacturing world. These plastics are especially tactile and often lurid in colour – characteristics which, not surprisingly, evoke an irresistible sense of play … I have embraced the physicality of this “stuff” to create dynamic, anthropomorphic works that also offer viewers an opportunity for reflection on our wider built environment’.

• Identify the plastic pieces that Louise Paramor has used in her sculptural works.
• What do you think they were originally used for? How have they been repurposed in Louise Paramor’s artwork?
• How can our perceptions of an object change when it is taken out of its original context and turned into a work of art?
• Find an object made of plastic in your home and brainstorm all the ways it can be used and functions it can serve.

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To create The gallery of air, 2013 Patrick Pound assembled works from his personal collection of found object and works from the NGV collection which, despite their differences, might be found to hold the single idea of air. The objects fell into four categories:

1. Metaphorical connections to air: For example a Zephyr, Zephyr being a Greek god of the West wind.
2. Physical connections to air: For example, an air stem glass.
3. Visual representations of air: For example, a photograph of a man in the wind.
4. Practical or utilitatarian connection to air: For example, an asthma inhaler

The artist wanted to give things a break from their traditionally agreed meaning. Visitors were drawn into a game of rethinking and considering how these objects might activate a single idea.

• How might the works in the image reflect the idea of air?
• What objects could you find in your own house to add to a gallery of air? What category of connection to air used by the artist would apply to each object?
• Applying this same process, gather found things from around your house that hold a single idea and create your own little exhibition. Give your collection an interesting title.

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Jack Meyers’ sound/wall sculpture Industrial Revolution, 1971, is created from 1970s electronic goods. Described as ‘a sonic zap machine’, the three metre long work is a shock of fluorescent plastic, intricately choreographed electronic circuitry and neon trance inducing flashing lights.

• Meyer was inspired by the new technology being created in the 50’s-60’s. What technology do you think epitomises the 21st century?
• Industrial Revolution is a mural-sculptural artwork which is animated with flashing lights and dynamic sound track. Looking at the still image of the artwork can you imagine the soundtrack that would accompany this work? What music inspires you to create art? Choose a song and create an artwork to accompany it.
• This work is constructed from repurposed objects and electronics, neon lights, electrical wiring, speaker, cassette tape. They are compiled into a brightly coloured glossy composition. What materials can you find around the house that are of similar colour or texture? Lay them out together and create a found object collage.

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Hong Hao is a contemporary Chinese artist known for his use of photography to produce works that explore modern life and consumer culture through his own routines and possessions. To create this work, the artist scanned each of the items he used or consumed each day, then saved the images as digital files and waited until the next year to create a link of highlights. Hong describes this as ‘the daily repetitive work of an accountant’, work which gave him ‘an anchor in a fast-changing material world’.

• Why do you think the artist chose to collect and organise objects from their daily life? What meanings and messages do they convey?
• What if you were to collect and organise all the objects you used in a single day? What could we learn or know about you from looking at these objects?
• Collect and photograph all the objects you use and consume over a single day or week and document them in some way. You could even ask a friend or family member from a different generation to do the same. Consider how the objects you documented might tell us about modern life, about youth culture or about different generations.

Lisa Walker is a New Zealand jeweller whose work asks the question: “what is jewellery?”. Her designs employ unexpected materials including found objects such as toys, fake grass, rubber bands and hobby shop treasures. Walker utilises her goldsmith training and her designer’s eye, composing these objects and elements in unusual and interesting ways. Playmobile necklace, 2010, uses small elements of plastic toys – little arms and legs. Lisa Walker has strung the pieces in rows with contrasting longer and shorter shapes. She has chosen analogous colours (colours next to each other on the colour wheel) to visually unify the shapes and to create contrast. The necklace resembles coral, something far more precious than the plastic from which it is made.

• What materials have been used? How are these materials different to those you might expect a necklace to be made from?
• Look around your house for something that you have multiples of, like old toothbrushes, bottle tops, seeds, sticks or toys, for example. Think about how you might arrange these objects and join them to create a piece of jewellery.