Adversity inspires Taranaki visionary to make beautiful art from humble plastic tag

New Plymouth artist Volker Hawighorst with his work Mt Taranaki Void showing at Milbank Gallery. Photo/Bevan Conley

Art as therapy is a well-known concept but New Plymouth artist Volker Hawighorst has discovered a unique medium.

The beautiful 3-dimensional works in his exhibition at Milbank Gallery are created from plastic bread tags.

"Until I came to live in New Zealand, I had never seen anything like these plastic tags," says Hawighorst.

From the German city of Osnabrück, the artist worked as a cabinet maker and architect although he always admired abstract art.

"We came to live in New Zealand 17 years ago and life has been good but in the last few years, I've had some bad health and accidents.

"I am a very active cyclist and I was injured a couple of times and also had treatment for cancer.

"My recovery was slow and I felt very tired which made me depressed because I love being active."

Sitting in his garage was a massive hoard of plastic bread tags which he always had vague plans to use for something.

A local school had collected them in response to an offer of a wheelchair for the equivalent weight of tags.

"Unfortunately the guy who made the offer had left by the time they collected enough and they wanted someone to take them so I made a donation and brought them home."

At first, he made small, decorative items by glueing the tags together and found it very satisfying.

"I started to perfect my techniques and experimented with different types of glue and varied drying times."

Hawighorst's son set him up a workstation in the garage where he produced the first of his acclaimed artworks.

A more recent cycling accident resulted in a broken hip for Hawighorst and he says although his recovery has been better than the previous one, he became mildly depressed and wanted to throw himself into art but his original supply of bread tags had almost run out.

"I had the happiest day of my year when I found a guy with 80kg of bread tags to give away.

"He only lives 5km from my house and he says he will deliver them."

Moving Grid by Volker Hawighorst's Moving Grid showing at Milbank Gallery. Photo/Bevan Conley

2018 has been a good year for the artist - he has been a finalist in the Whakatane Molly Morpeth Canaday Award 3D category, highly commended in the Taranaki National Art Awards and currently has an exhibition at New Plymouth's JD Reid Gallery where his work has been selling well.

"I love showing at the Milbank Gallery - the building is a perfect setting for my work."

Hawighorst says he is pleased to see a trend in New Zealand of art made from plastics that would otherwise end up in our oceans but he wishes people would stop manufacturing it.

Best Before (reviving the useless): Showing at WHMilbank Gallery, 1B Bell St. Call Bill Milbank 027 628 6877 for viewing times.