Installation, 2020
“This work consists of disposable plastic glasses that have been colored with textile dyes in different shades of red, blue and green. These are the three most popular colors in the historical production of the Reijmyre glassworks and they are on prominent display in the glass cases of the Rejmyre Glass Museum. To produce these colors, cadmium, cobalt and arsenic were used in the glass making process. These three materials now figure prominently amongst the pollutants in the landfill behind the factory.
Small toxic glass particles, produced by the cold-working (grinding) stage of glass production, were picked up by the water used to cool the grinding stones and flushed out into the land behind the factory. At the height of Reijmyre Glassworks’ production, there were hundreds of employees engaged in this grinding activity, a constant flow of wastewater mixed with particle pollutants flowed from the factory. There is now a concern that these particles will filter down, over time, into the wetland below the landfill and from there make their way into nearby waterways.
Throughout history, color has been used by humans to elevate and beautify objects and buildings. It has also been used to mark status. Pigment was precious. The old gray timbered cottages, which nowadays may seem more picturesque than the red-painted houses, were not left unpainted because they were thought to be nicer that way. People simply could not afford to "color" them.
Nowadays, we think we can afford to use both paints and pigments without restriction, without seeing their true value. Plastic is known to be one of these undervalued materials. In the same way that small particles of glass seep out of the landfill and are carried into the waterways, small, microplastic particles are now spreading everywhere in our environment. Recent studies by the University of Manchester, as just one example, analyzed samples from the bottom of the Medtereanen Sea, near Italy, and found up to 1.9 million plastic pieces per square meter.
The discarded plastic glasses used in this installation have been processed, through dyeing, and repositioned. We are interested in re-valuing them by positioning them in relation to Reijmyre Glasbruk's traditional handmade glass products. This was done first by installing the colored plastic glasses inside display cases in the Reijmyre Glass Museum and again, in a later wall-based installation, in Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies’ gallery adjacent to the museum.” – Sissi Westerberg and Kerstin Ribers
Kerstin Ribers is a local textile artist living in Brenäs educated at Handarbetets Vänner Textil. Sissi Westerberg lives in Kalbo and is educated at the Department of Metal Design at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. Westerberg is the co-founder of Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies and a senior lecturer at Ädellab Konstfack.
This project was part of the reseach strand and residency program Detox – Clean it up!