Recycled

About

Reuse is an old habit: quilts pieced from worn clothes, medieval churches built with Roman columns. As a deliberate artistic choice, working with waste gathered force in the 20th century. Kurt Schwitters picked rubbish from the streets of Hanover for his collages, Louise Nevelson painted scavenged wooden scraps into black reliefs, and Tony Cragg arranged plastic fragments into images on the floor and wall around 1980.

Artists in West and southern Africa have made some of the most searching work with reclaimed materials. El Anatsui stitches thousands of bottle-top foils into shimmering hangings; Romuald Hazoumè turns plastic petrol cans into masks; Gonçalo Mabunda welds decommissioned weapons from Mozambique's civil war into thrones and masks. Tim Noble and Sue Webster pile rubbish so that a single light casts their silhouettes on the wall. Look for signs of former use, labels, rust and wear, which let the material keep its history.