“The mozzarella ciabatta, please,” says London-based artist and sculptor Nick Aliberti to the waiter at Golborne Deli, where we meet on a concerningly warm October afternoon. “Do you want anything?,” he asks me. “I’m okay, thank you.” I’ve already eaten. Nothing worth writing home about but that’s neither here nor there. “On second thought, is it too early for a beer?” I ask, to which Nick responds: “Never.”
Nick Aliberti graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art in London last year. It was his graduate project, A Growing Sculpture, that caught my eye. Finding beauty in the discarded, Nick repurposes metal gathered from scrap yards across London. Using techniques including plasma cutting, corrosion, burning and bleaching, Nick considers intention and experimentation, creating abstract and evocative compositions of manipulated metalwork that fill spaces small and large.
His techniques are undoubtedly better suited to a workshop than a studio, making it quite difficult to practise without equipment, which, at current, he has no access to. In the meantime, he’s been working collaboratively with Reference Point, a specialist library, book shop and bar in London, on a book focusing on both his craft and his creative philosophy which toys with themes surrounding collection and the unearthed potential in all that we waste.
Nick is part of a generation of artists commenting on the climatic zeitgeist (even if somewhat accidentally) by innovatively utilising what already exists and therefore extending lifelines and practicing circularity. We need more of this, not just circularity but inherence; an undeliberate, subconscious and habitual better, where materials are not raw nor virgin but existing and ripe, ready and waiting to re-enter a circular design system. A better where conversations like these, which are fundamentally about sustainability, don’t consider sustainability to be a concerted focus but a given.
Of course, he’s no angel. None of us are. And, some of his processes are energy intensive, but it’s Nick’s juxtaposition of the wasted and the beautiful; the old and the new; the meaningless and the meaningful that fascinates me. He puts this down to being a young person living in an urban jungle that is forested by skyscrapers and swamped with waste.
Waste is in an abundance. Materials are in an abundance. Really, there’s no need for new. We just need to take a step back and reimagine. Nick’s oeuvre proves it possible. Over a panini and a pint, I find out more…
Rose Dodd: Nick, you use discarded materials, specifically metal, for your sculptures. Where do you source your materials from?
Nick Aliberti: During my foundation year at Camberwell [College of Arts, London], loads of the students would throw out these really interesting materials. I started thinking about if and how these materials could be reused, collecting and merging them together in weird ways whenever I could. I’d pick up anything and everything to incorporate into my installations, from fireplaces to bathtubs and toilets. Then I started focusing on metal. Remnants and offcuts of steel from construction and factories might end up in these huge skips in scrap yards outside London. It might then go on to be recycled or it might not. I’ll visit these sites, building up a rapport with the workers, then eventually, maybe, they’ll allow me to look around their vast industrial plains where I’ll climb into these enormous skips, just looking until I find the piece that suits my needs.
RD: And what are those needs? What are you looking for specifically?
NA: It’s often about the surface, sometimes about the shape. It’s hard to say exactly but it’ll speak to me. No piece is ever the same, they’re very unique. Maybe they’ve been out in the rain and they’re encrusted with rust or they’ve warped and bent. That’s what I love about working with discarded metal as opposed to buying brand new metal, it’s weathered and that makes it quite interesting to play with. I enjoy not knowing what I might find and, you know, not knowing if the site managers will even let me in. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.
RD: Why metal?
NA: I find it really interesting structurally. Also, living in a city, everything around us is built with metal infrastructure and architecture which we rarely consider. I guess it makes me think about how things are made.
RD: So, once you’ve collected your materials, what’s next? What is your design process?
NA: Intervention, I suppose. Obviously, there are different modes and methods for this and different pieces require different treatments. Some pieces I cut with a plasma cutter, others I might weld together to create distinct shapes. A lot of it is about intentionally weathering the surface to create unusual patterns and textures. You can use acids to corrode metal surfaces. If you corrode copper, for example, it turns turquoise because of oxidation. This process happens to copper in nature too, I’m just experimenting by accelerating it. Sometimes I just straight up paint surfaces; sometimes I burn them; rust them, you name it. Then, I’ll have a collection of objects which each have different characteristics, and no two are ever the same… I’ve tried but it never comes out the same [laughs]. I’ll then structure them into this fluid and ever-growing composition that changes through different iterations as I continue to collect and experiment.
RD: These don’t sound like traditional studio space techniques.
NA: Yes, it’s more of a workshop situation. Now that I’ve finished uni, creating like this is a little harder because I don’t have a studio nor do I have a workshop.
RD: Without a workshop, how do you work?
NA: I have to plan my experimentation a lot more. I act less on a whim where before I might have been more spontaneous. Everything’s smaller. I work on individual pieces. I feel like it’s a lot more intimate. I also don’t have the space to keep things so some of my work might go back to the dump where I found it.
RD: Like releasing an animal back into the wild, having nurtured something that might have otherwise been lost. The beauty is in the discarded.
NA: The end product is emotional and it’s hard to part with. I want to elicit a visceral reaction and a curiosity. I want people to wonder and question: Where did this come from? How did you get this? How did you make this?
RD: We need to ask ourselves questions like these more often. It sounds like you’re quite connected to your craft and with the objects and techniques that you use. Talk to me about connections.
NA: I really enjoy going out to find my materials, discovering new places and talking to new people. There’s a certain rush that comes from finding these objects and bringing them back. My work isn’t only about looking interesting; it’s also about the moment of discovery, visual impulsiveness and interactivity. Some of my larger sculptures, they take up space in a room; to me, there’s something about having something in a room, a physical and tactile body of work, that you can walk around and interact with and react to.
RD: You mentioned emotion and reaction. I imagine everyone’s emotional response to your work differs. Something that really entices me is your re-use of waste, repurposing it into something quite abstract and thought provoking. We output waste in such excess, barely dwelling on it as we crave more and more.
NA: The more you look, the more you see how much is thrown away. So much of this waste has potential for re-use. Living in a city is bizarre in the sense that you come into contact with a lot of this waste but at the same time, you’re blind to it. A lot of waste is hidden away in the margins of the city. In the scrapyards, for example. We need to figure out ways to recover this waste.
RD: We do.
NA: For me, it makes sense to use material that is already in existence. Not only to breathe new life into the discarded but also consider its history, context and story. Something that has had a life of its own has had time to mature and decay. Metal warps, scratches, scars and grows – I use this ageing as a springboard to work from.
RD: I like the way you anthropomorphise your material. There’s much to be said about this as a philosophy. I wonder what the waste landscape would look like if we valued objects differently, more humanly, where each thing has its own tale and past.
NA: If we saw the environment as part of ourselves, maybe we’d be less inclined to do things that harm it.
RD: Which is easier said than done, especially in an urban landscape, bursting with industrialisation, material temptation – and, very little nature.
NA: Exactly, I think this extends to the West in general. The way our lives are framed, how external and goal driven everything is. I do think that creativity can offer a space in which you can explore and relinquish the controls and stressors that separate us from nature and instinct.
RD: You mentioned luck with regards to gaining access to the metal you use. I like the idea of the negotiation and the collaboration involved in this process. I think collaboration is key to a greener future. What do you think?
NA: At one particular scrapyard I went to, I heard a radio blaring from a shipping container so I went and knocked. A girl, probably in her twenties, answered the door in a lab coat. Turns out she was renting the container for her research on vertical farming. Relating this back to art, lots of students and artists’ studios are in repurposed or abandoned office blocks and disused warehouses. This sort of collaboration, of wasted space and creativity, is really interesting. I can’t remember who it was but someone said that every company in every industry should employ an artist or have an artist-in-residence because it will shift the framework. Then, in terms of collaborating with nature, it’s just obvious that we should collaborate with nature, we’ve learnt everything from it.
RD: At what point did we forget that, I wonder. I recently read about psychodynamics, the interrelationship of parts of the mind and psyche as they relate to different forces, be that emotional, motivational or perhaps even physical. I feel like we could apply this to production, appreciating aesthetics in the process or in something’s iterations as opposed to in its final form, which is relevant to your concept of an ever-growing or morphing sculpture.
NA: Like valuing and appreciating things for the journey they’ve been and continue on?
RD: Yes, exactly!
NA: These days we’re not really in tune with how things are made. Even like the iPhone, generally speaking we don’t know how it works inside or where its individual components come from. I mean, you can research this but who does? [laughs] What we want is a slow burning relationship with our objects. Something that comes to mind here is the prospect of designing things that age well rather than that look good and age terribly. I feel like the more you know about something, the more connected you are to its roots. The more you cherish it and enjoy it.
RD: I suppose I’d like to know if the nuances we’ve discussed were ever intended in your craft. I don’t think it’s necessarily the artists’ onus to advocate sustainability, but it’s interesting to see such undertones come through, even if by accident.
NA: At art school, they don’t necessarily promote the best philosophy in terms of creating sustainably. If you create anything, it’s going to leave a mark. It’s in your best interest as an individual to repurpose. Even from a pure financial point of view, you’re wasting money if you’re buying everything new. I never intended to make work that was centred around environmentalism. I think it’s just the result of being interested in objects, collecting and contextualising things – and constantly being surrounded by waste.
RD: A product of the contemporary world in which we live where we are surrounded by waste. Now it’s a matter of figuring out how to use it.