Of Saints and Men
Despard Gallery
Hobart
31 August-26 September 2007

From Islamic patterns to Coke cans, ASHLEY CRAWFORD follows the path of Lucia Usmiani.

The rubbish of the world is the stuff of dreams for Lucia Usmiani. Detritus becomes delirium under her hands - a battered Coca Cola can becomes a part of an intense Mandala of glittering aluminium.

Usmiani's practice began with an interest in decorative surface pattern. Traditional Islamic patterning was hugely inspiring for the artist, and the works, for all their poetry, are based on repeated units, a perfect geometry.

While far from setting out to replicate literal Islamic patterns, by applying the same mathematical principles of repetition, rotation and uniformity, the resulting patterns are decidedly reminiscent of the style of works found in the Middle East. "Particularly if the surface of the aluminium can is dense with print," she says. 

What the rest of us would thoughtlessly discard becomes the building blocks of a dense patterning. "I am attracted to the banal because we use it every day," she says. "We are so familiar with these objects that we don't really need to look at them. We hardly notice them. They exist just below our radar. This is especially so with mass-produced consumables," she says. 

"They are mostly cheap and easy to replace. Bottles and cans pass through our hands all the time and all we are really concerned with is what they contain. One item looks exactly like the next, so, from having seen them before we don't need to scrutinise them. They are predictable in form and function. 

"Place that object in a different context and suddenly it becomes interesting. It's seen in a different way. It allows the viewer to have a different experience of ordinary objects, to enter into an aesthetic engagement with objects that are normally associated with the domestic sphere. 

Usmiani doesn't target specific products or labels in her work, but she does express concern about how society consumes natural resources and creates massive waste. 

"We all make waste and we must take responsibility for it as individuals," she says. "Hopefully I can show how the use of an object is not limited to one function. It was always heartening for me to see overloaded recycle bins, meaning that people weren't just adding to landfill, but I did wonder at how much money from those households went on cola compared to milk." 

The cans and bottles she uses happen to be those most readily available in large quantities. "Recycle bins were full of them," she says. "The fact that there were more of one particular brand than another was hardly surprising, but I chose them for their aesthetic properties and their convenient numbers." 

Often the objects that worked best for her were the hardest to find. Accordingly, some works have taken years of obsessive collecting to get the numbers she required. "I'm very selective about choosing material that allows me to work in particular ways.