Artist Turns Discarded Silverware and Scraps into Magnificent Sculptures

October 27, 2017

Bouquets and Butterflies

Earlier this year, we introduced you to British artist Ann Carrington, who turns old silverware into blooming flower bouquets. Inspired by fruit garland sculptures and Dutch still life paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, her impressive floral sculptures are constructed from “silver plated spoons, pewter tankards, silver vases and plates.” Carrington sources her materials in junk shops, antique fairs, auctions, and from cutlery dealers.

Carrington reveals to My Modern Met via email that the flower bouquets can take up to three months to make, and they represent “modern day memento mori (Latin for ‘remember you will die’).” They are the “the contents of a 16th century Dutch still life, reassembled in another dimension and time,” she explains. Carrington believes mundane objects—such as cutlery, barbed wire, pins, and paintbrushes—come with their own history and story “which can be unravelled and analyzed if rearranged, distorted or realigned to give them new meaning as sculpture.”

Carrington has used everything from buttons and denim jeans to coins and safety pins. In some of her most recent work, she has even used old beer cans to recreate traditional bust sculptures, which she humorously titles Pissheads. In other work, she creates patchworks of hammered beer cans which depict historic members of British royalty, as well as Native American and religious figures. By using so many different materials, Carrington has had to learn many different skills. She tells us: “I have to be able to sew, weld, have a knowledge of carpentry, paint , draw, and my next skill to learn is going to be glass blowing.”

If you’re in London, you can see Carrington’s recycled beer can work for yourself at her upcoming exhibition—entitled Super Brew—at Paul Smith’s flagship store starting November 15 through November 29, 2017.