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Beautiful struggle, Johnson Zuze, Zimbabwe

Recycled art is usually recognised as the employment of garbage and found items in the process of making art.

Junk art uses everyday, disposable items in new formats although the original item may not be changed. 

Up-cycling functions to promote an idea, pointing to an issue through the utilization of discarded and found items... and by this method, value is added to the final creation. 

At the city museum or gallery, up-scaling is encountered.

Sophisticated pieces may still have a function but others have been created purely for aesthetics; as an art form... and they may have a social or political comment to make reflecting the artists's thoughts and ideas on a certain issue. You might find reconstructed masks on the wall, free-standing sculptures, wall art, photographs or collages all made from recycled junk material. 

Ram, Olu Amoda, Nigeria

Lost, Victor Nyakauru, Zimbabwe

In a scrap yard the magnitude of shapes and materials can inspire - each form or object leads to another step in the process of making something new. The dimension of a selective process taking place immediately implies a thought already conspired.

Symbolic meaning is probably subconsciously attached to the choices, based on their own memories and relationships with the items, including how they make them feel. Therefore an upcycled piece can relate on very different levels to different people.

National Gallery, Zim recycled art

Owl, Johnson Zuze, Nat Gall, Zimbabwe

On another dimension, photographers create images of wildly creative and deliberately re-invented things that are photomontaged together or put in surreal surroundings like large portraits of social conditions.

They convincingly convey the artists's message such as this visually powerful one below which has used computer parts and other scavenged items to good effect.

Untitled-VI, from the 'Jua Kali' photographic paint series

'Jua kali' series, Tahir Carl Karmali,

This New York based artist pays tribute with this work to the informal workforce of his home country Kenya where full-time employment is rare and many people earn a living from their innovative endeavors.

• Amoda Olu, Nigeria b 1959
• Bester Willie, SA b 1956
• Botha Andries, South Africa b 1952 
• El Anatsui, Ghana b 1944
• Dilomprizulike, Nigeria b 1960
• Adeagbo Georges, Benin b 1942 
• Amidou Dossou, Benin b 1965 
• Amoda Olu, Nigeria b 1959 
• Bandoma Steve, Congo b 1981 
• El Baz Mahomed, Morocco b 1967 
• Clottey Serge Attukwei, Ghana b 1985 
• Dias Jorge, Mozambique b 1972 
• Dime Moustapha, Senegal 1952-1998 
• Gaba Meshac, Benin b 1961 
• Hazoume Romauld, Benin b 1962 
• Kabiru Cyrus, Kenya b 1984 
• Kader Attia, Algeria b 1970
• Karmali Tahir Carl, Kenya 
• Mabota Titos, Mozambique b 1963 
• Mabunda Goncalo, Mozambique b 1975 
• Mahama Ibrahim, Ghana b 1987
• Mulondo Patrick, Uganda b 1989
• Buthelezi Mbongeni, South Africa b 1966 
• Nitegeka Serge Alain, Burundi b 1983
• Olu Amoda, Nigeria b 1959
• Rushemeza Duhirwe, Rwanda b 1977
• Sumegne Joseph-Francis, Cameroon b 1951 
• Takadiwa Moffat, Zimbabwe b 1983 
• Tayou Pascale Marthine, Cameroon b 1967 
• Vaccaro Roberto, South Africa
• Zuze Johnson, Zimbabwe b 1985

Romauld Hazoume from Benin first presented his masks at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.

'Petrolheads', Pigozzi Collection

Here it was seen how a recycled object could have its inherent value consciously raised, by not only being a reflection of a production process but also, by having a political/social agenda attached to it; a concept, an idea to be communicated.

For more than 2 decades Hazoume's jerrycan masks have been telling their own stories, face-like forms that provide clues to the religious and political landscape of Benin.

Many other artists have followed Hazoume each making very personal statements both in design and form... and in critical comment. 

Joseph-Francis Sumegne, West Cameroon

Parallel Portraits of First Sawa Kings, Joseph Francis Sumegne, Masking Another Africa

Sumegne has been making intimate and detailed compositions for many years now and his pieces continue to grow in complexity of application. Not all of his components are found, some are appropriated for his vision... beads, braiding, hardware items, copper wire, scarves etc. He weaves, sews, braids and adheres, while also applying basket making and tapestry techniques to his art pieces.

Sansage, Joseph Francis Sumegne, Doual' Art

His figures and his faces can take on a slightly menacing stance, they are bold and sometimes confrontational with strong identities and characteristics.

There is no end to the choice of objects to recycle/reprocess or convert to something new.

Be it a sculpture, a mobile, a wall hanging, an item of furniture, a bag or a sheet of paper, a light, a piece of jewelry, a fashion item or even artwork reproduced on canvas. All are end articles re-purposed from discarded things.

Favored recycling materials come from vehicles, trains, engines, bicycles, skate boards, workshop tools, garage hardware, plumbing components, inner tyre-tubes, fuel and oil containers and electronic devices. Drinking cans and straws, food tins and cartons, fabric pieces, scissors, cotton reels, toys, plastic anything, kitchenware, glassware, pottery, tiles and mosaics, linoleum. Natural objects like bone, feathers, shells, quills, teeth and musical items like tapes, film, cassettes.. the list is inexhaustible! 

Found objects are used just as they are or they can be altered and adapted to suit the artist's intentions. They can be cut up, broken down, broken apart, re-fashioned, stuck, glued, melted, welded, tied, hung, hooked, nailed... a multitude of applications that turn them into something else.

Moffat Takadiwa, Zimbabwe

The Rhodesian narrative, Moffat Takadiwa

Takadiwa's work is fabulous to behold.

Bold in presentation and resourceful in medium, he uses typewriter and keyboard pieces to create large wall sculptures that are highly inventive and original, forcing one to look closer to see what indeed his creations are made of. 

Say hello, Moffat Takadiwa, Zimbabwe

Olu Amoda, Nigeria

Amoda is an internationally recognised sculptor, muralist, furniture designer and multi-media artist, always visible at major art fairs and attending workshops around the continent. He describes his art as "re-purposed material art'. 

Small sunflower, Olu Amoda

Olu Amoda, Sunflower2

In the series above he has used cutlery (spoons primarily) and other metal objects to create versions of sunflowers in a highly unusual and technically skillful manner. They are the perfect illustration of the transformation of inconspicuous materials to an object of beauty.

Benon Lutaaya, Uganda/SA

Benon Lutaaya, Uganda/SA

Lutaaya arrived in South Africa from Uganda in 2011 to take up his residency award at the Bag Factory Artist's Studio in Johannesburg.

Benon Lutaaya, 'Unfinished life'

Very quickly he realised 2 things; one, that he needed to do something outstandingly unique in order to be recognised and two, that art was a very expensive career in terms of procurement of materials to produce his work. He turned to collecting waste, specifically waste paper and began to create collages of torn, cut and creased paper, skilfully building up faces and figures into dynamic and invigorating portraits and half-torsos.

His pieces are sensitive in colour, application and content... often socially charged, they project human conditions and issues like poverty, immigration and political instability.

Mbongeni Buthelezi, SA

Buthelezi combines his artistic passion with a commitment to worldly environmental issues.

Once a cattle herder in Kwazulu-Natal, he has risen from his humble beginnings to become a much sought after artist. While studying at the Funda Centre for art in Soweto he started to collect plastic containers on the way to college.

mbongeni 2017

Mbongeni Buthelezi at work

25 years later he has perfected his initial technique into a real art form. 

Molten plastic is applied to a canvas often in more than one layer to create complex textures and colour combinations. Each layer needs to be individually understood as different plastics adhere or melt in different ways. He can use about 5000 pieces of plastic for a single piece of artwork.

In addition to this form of application he draws in sepia and paints in colour and monochrome. This skill in drawing underwrites his collaged pieces and somehow, while the art pieces appear fragmented in nature, they still manage to hang together.

'Sugar tax' exhibition, Melrose Gallery, Jhbg, 2017

His most recent exhibition is called 'Sugar Tax'. In this, he specifically uses plastic caps and soda bottles as his 'paint' to highlight the plight of obesity and diabetes, chronic health issues which plague Africa presently. 

Duhirwe Rushemeza, Rwanda

Duhirwe Rushemeza,'Wind-Up Bird', (Yellow and White, Shovel Detritus)

'Untitled'(Brown and White, Oxidized Handle)

In these paintings seen above, Rushemeza has used layers of thin-set mortar, concrete, acrylic house paint, wood and embedded metal detritus to create her artworks.

This assemblage process is deliberately left directly visible.... the artist builds up the layers only to sand and carve them away again revealing the painted patterns and the collected, 'found' objects. Her work pays homage to two disparate histories: the crumbling, colonial, Ghanaian and Ivory Coast buildings she visited in her youth and the rigid and graphically striking Imigongo paintings of SW Rwanda.

She paints this way to engage her viewers in topical subjects like human displacement, cultural adaptation and personal and material memories.