Avantgarb{age}: Total Trash Transformed

The idea of making clothes out of rubbish perhaps conjures up mental images of children constructing capes from black bin liners, helmets from egg boxes and swords from tin foil. On closer inspection, however, it seems recycled fashion could be more than just child’s play. The cleverly-named Avantgarb{age}, a new photography exhibition by Caitlin Margaret Kelly, shows how ordinary household waste can be turned into items of fashion and objects of art.

Kelly, 38, comes from Boulder, Colorado and has a degree in Photojournalism. She originally booked to come to Argentina in 2006 to run the Buenos Aires marathon. Unfortunately, the race was cancelled and so she was left with ten days for sightseeing. Though she spoke no Spanish at the time, Kelly found a desire to make the city her home and did just that, moving here a little over three years ago. She works as a freelance photographer for diverse publications in addition to her own projects, past examples of which include series of images from a soup kitchen and of Buenos Aires by night.

Before Avantgarb{age}, Kelly had photographed BA Fashion Week, which she found “interesting and creative but a little pretentious.” She was then introduced to a style of fashion which was less glamour and more grunge when she met Argentine clothes designer Aidana Baldassarre, who aims to show the importance of resource conservation by transforming rubbish into wearable pieces of art. Baldassarre would save milk bags and bottles at home and find discarded fabric or bicycle inner tubes in the street. With the help of scissors and stitches, milk bags became trousers, ties were transformed into dresses, and tyres morphed into hats and skirts.

A collaboration with Baldassarre seemed a good idea. “Her work had a rawness to it which allowed me to see the material as it had been,” explains Kelly. “It wasn’t a case of ‘let’s make recycling cool and polished’ but rather about connecting with the materials. She takes garbage items and asks, “what if?” before giving them a new lease of life.” With the clothes already made, Kelly selected pieces from the collection to suit her models, whom she refers to as “non-models” as they are ‘real’ people, acquaintances and friends. The reasons behind this choice were twofold: to connect her art to the everyday and to promote healthy, normal body types.

Models were then photographed in two urban locations – a balcony in Once and a brick-walled art gallery in Belgrano. Kelly arranged the lighting with the end product in mind; for example, harsh lighting to accentuate the rubber. In a departure from Photojournalistic protocol, she also played around with the saturation. The resulting images are diverse and memorable. One photo is a striking profile of a man wearing a purple rubber hat, looking almost regal; another is a twirling girl, encircled by a skirt made of recycled fabric. The accompanying description explains: “As the model dances across the floor, the softness of the materials catching air, the photo represents an antithesis to the idea of garbage as gross, ugly, or something to be avoided.”

Avantgarb{age} was published mid-way though last year as a hardback book, which is currently undergoing a redesign to make it larger and available on recycled paper. A proportion of all sales goes to Cimientos, a charitable foundation for equal educational opportunities, whose initiatives include grants to help children buy school supplies.

Favourite images from the book have been selected for the exhibition, each accompanied by a description in English and Spanish of the materials from which the photographed clothing item is made. In keeping with the theme of reusing rubbish, the exhibition flyers and explanatory notes are printed on reused paper. All photographs displayed will be for sale.

To help meet the costs of the putting on the exhibition such as printing and framing, Kelly set a fundraising target on the website Kickstarter, which bills itself as “a way to fund and follow creativity.” People can pledge money for projects proposed. “You have to have a tangible end goal and you either raise the full amount or get nothing,” explains Kelly. Donors were rewarded with incentives such as sets of cards and prints from the show. The initiative paid off and the target was achieved. The exhibition opens its doors this week.