STUDENT ART & DESIGN EXHIBITION | NICOSIA, CYPRUS

Last June, whilst in Nicosia I stumbled across art gallery TESTDRIVE in the old town. The exhibition featured the work of art and design students and not surprisingly centred around upcycling and sustainability. Waste materials were used to create textile and garment art pieces.

Packaging material was reclaimed to create garments: a bubble wrap dress, a nylon packaging top and so on. Immediately, looking at packaging materials after coming out of lockdown, brought into sharp focus for me, the amount of packaging material I used and threw away during the lockdowns resulting from the numerous online shopping deliveries I received. It is no wonder it motivated students to think of ways to reuse these items specifically.

There were also suspended textile art pieces on display that had used fabric scraps cut into strips and ribbons woven through reclaimed plastic fencing material, where the mesh of the fencing material created the framework for the technique. This resulted in colourful, loosely geometric designs, where the fence became a screen. The result for me also visually echoed historical Greek κουρελού carpets.