We Make Carpets – just don’t try to walk on them!
The entrance fee is a modest EUR2.50, and it’s free if you donate three plastic bottles to be used as art in the museum’s workshop program.
This is another one of those excellent little Amsterdam ideas which could easily be replicated in other parts of the world.
The former Shell tower, Overhoeks, is vacant at the moment, so for three months a tijdelijk (‘temporary’) art gallery has been set up in the empty space on the ground floor.
It’s an excellent location, just a short ride on the free ferry across the water from Centraal Station, right next to the newly opened EYE film museum.
Film Museum EYE on the left, Shell tower centre, Ij ferry right.
Appropriately in a recycled building, the exhibition features art with a recycling theme. In the witty work ‘Disposable Carpet’ pictured at the top of this post the collective We Make Carpets has covered the floor with artfully arranged cafeteria cutlery and cups.
Peter Singer has probably attracted the most publicity here with his Wereld van Zwerfvuil (‘World of Litter’)- a floating globe of the world made from plastic bottles and other junk he collected around the city.
Peter Smith – Wereld van Zwerfvuil.
I particularly liked Richard Kuijper‘s still lifes, emulating the Flemish masters, with the novel twist of using plastic fruit, flowers and dolls.
Richard Kuijper – Ei (Egg). Photo: richardkuijper.com
And finally we enjoyed the large photos of Marjan Teeuwen’s ‘Destroyed houses’. She finds houses which are undergoing demolition, then stacks the broken materials together to make new constructions.
Marjan Teeuwen – Verwoest Huis (Destroyed House)
The Tijdelijk Museum is open until September 23rd, 2012. You can save yourself the entrance fee if you bring along your three plastic bottles. It shouldn’t be too hard to find them.
After spending many years in recycling as a job I’ll need to be sure to visit this place next time I go to Amsterdam!
You’ll need to get to this one by September, Andrew, but when it’s over they’ll surely re-use it somewhere else. It’s an idea too good to throw away.
I love Peter Singer’s floating globe – a great reminder to keep the rubbish out of the water. And what a great incentive to enter the exhibition for free! Is it only bottles you can donate? Not straws, cups, flower pots, smelly shoes?
We had other garbage to offer them, Antonina, including smelly shoes. But no, it was strictly entry by BYO bottles only.