Never Waste What You Have Taken

‘Never Waste What You Have Taken’ was created during GroundWork Gallery Residency, 2024 and was presented alongside the Ground Up Conference in November 2024.

Inspired by Kings Lynn’s industrial past and present, I explored ideas around how we value materials and how we can keep them in use.

In response to seeing the vast volume of paper and cardboard stored for recycling at the Palm recycling facility in Kings Lynn, I was inspired to work with pre-consumer ‘waste’, sourcing the trimmed edges leftover from newspaper production at Newspaper Club.

In ‘Never Waste What You Have Taken’ (borrowed from the Honourable Harvest in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass) newspaper offcuts are gathered and bound together to be saved for future use.

As we become more conscious of the value of materials, what possibilities will arise now and in the future from our need to rethink how we take and use materials on our finite planet? With ‘waste’ an abundant source of raw materials, how can we adapt to see opportunities within this?