Xchange by Nick Gentry 

About his work:

Much of his artistic output has been generated with the use of contributed artefacts and materials. He states that through this process “contributor, artist and viewer come closer together”. His art is influenced by the development of consumerism, technology, identity and cyberculture in society, with a distinctive focus on obsolete media.

Birds of Aperture by Paul Octavious

Dissected Maps by Jeff Woodbury

Woodbury on his project:

I have always had maps around. I grew up in a military family and my father, among other things, made maps. Even after I left home I traveled, and maps offer both plans and dreams. The concept of the map is one of humanity’s earliest and greatest inventions - and one of our densest ways of storing and managing information.

I began dissecting maps in 1998. Tracing routes with a knife is similar to driving down a highway - most of what you’re left with is the road itself and a narrow band of land on either side. By cutting away everything but the roads, a map ceases to be a 2-dimensional representation of reality and becomes an actual 3-dimensional thing…

Maps are generally cheap, and their value is predicated on their usefulness. When they become outdated we throw them away. By dissecting them, their use-value is destroyed by the loss of their function. But the use-value is replaced with aesthetic value, and with it a commensurate extension of the object’s lifespan.

Book sculptures by Gareth Spor

Spor on his work:

Often fixating on the physics of light, the cosmos, and the geometries of space and time, I work across a diverse range of media to explore the states of wonderment achieved when people contemplate things larger than themselves. My work is a means to feed my own curiosity and to share some of the wonderment I feel with others.

Derrick Method makes furniture out of old books

Body of Knowledge by Dana Albany for Burning Man 2000 was constructed with out-of-date textbooks and discarded library books.

The Eternal Jungle by Zim and Zou is upscale upcycling

About the project:

For its 13th Carte Blanche, the Hermès store at Hong Kong International Airport is exhibiting a piece by the French artists Zim&Zou, ‘The Eternal Jungle’, which is an invitation into the wild.

The window installation creates an intriguing contrast between the jungle, a world that is dominated by wild animals, and one of great refinement, the world of Hermès. The window is influenced by the abundance of vegetation in Hong Kong.

The installation displays the finest skills in paper-cut art and leatherwork. Remaining faithful to its original purity, the artists create intricate objects with the paper, a material both beautiful and versatile. The ‘Monkey’, ‘Toucan’, and ‘Chameleon’ are all handcrafted and brought to life with leather offcuts carefully selected from the Hermès workshops.

The Happy City Birds project was started by Thomas Winther to kill two birds with one stone solve two major urban problems: dwindling habitats for birds and an abundance of trash. He began building birdhouses out of recycled materials and placing them in cities around Denmark. He has since spread his project worldwide by offering his birdhouses to bird lovers everywhere.

Words literally pour out of the shredded book sculptures by Jukhee Kwon

These wonderful map and vintage photo collages by Jackie Bassett are available in her Etsy store

The Brecce Collection of lamps by designer Marco Stefanelli repurposes sawmill scraps by embedding them with LED lights encased in resin.

Incarnate (Three Degrees of Certainty II) by Maskull Lasserre. There is something kind of appropriate about carving a human skull out of outdated computer manuals. 

Will Ryman’s Bird sculpture’s plumage isn’t soft like real feathers. It’s quite literally as hard as nails, a whole bunch of actual and fabricated steel nails. It can currently be seen on display at the Paul Kasmin Gallery along with some other extraordinary works he has built from ordinary and often counterintuitive objects.

Book artist and photographer Sonia Sawyer makes books blossom.

Wendy Gold’s fantastic decoupaged vintage globes