“No. 382 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.5 x 8 x 3.5 inches
Within the 1860s, the U.S. authorities launched kerosene as an alternate for lighting lamps. Whale oil had beforehand dominated the market however was unsustainable given the appalling quantity of animals killed as a way to present energy. The nation rapidly transitioned to fossil fuels, swapping one dangerous and extractive apply for an additional. Whereas whaling had its financial implications, it additionally birthed a largely nautical artwork type often known as scrimshaw, or engravings in bone or ivory.
Artist Duke Riley is attuned to this historical past and its modern-day implications. He gathers laundry detergent jugs, flip-flops, and bottles that when held family merchandise as soon as they wash up close to seashores and carves incisive allegories and ornamentation into their surfaces. Painted in a heat, grainy beige, the scavenged waste mimics the whale bones conventional to scrimshaw whereas the artist’s signature wit emerges by way of the up to date narratives of oil barons or marine creatures carrying human trash.
“No. 363 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25 inches
Having grown up in New England, Riley frequented maritime museums together with his household as a toddler. These experiences shaped his “early concepts of what artwork was,” and the marine, folks artwork aesthetic emerged early in his apply—it’s additionally unsurprising that right this moment, Riley steadily works from a ship docked close to Rhode Island. As issues with waste and plastic air pollution grew to become extra apparent throughout his visits to the ocean, he noticed a chance to broaden his scrimshaw works. “I used to be strolling down the seashore someday, and I discovered a chunk of plastic that I assumed was a bone and picked it up. It turned out to be a deck brush deal with for scrubbing a ship deck,” he tells Colossal.
This encounter prompted what’s now a rising collection of engraved sculptures, a lot of which comprise the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum. Diverging from the cheerful, shiny colours of packaging, Riley distorts the containers designed to advertise unchecked consumption on the expense of the setting. “I’ve at all times used quite a lot of discovered supplies,” he shares. “For me, it’s about taking a discovered materials or one thing that’s discarded or trash and making an attempt to remodel it in a approach that it’s nearly not recognizable.”
“Echelon of Uncertainty (Unhealthy Guys)” (2022), salvaged painted plastic in wooden and glass case, 18 x 51 x 6 inches
Collectively, the works place plastic waste as relics of our time with the potential to outlast humanity. “If you go to a maritime museum, and also you see these totally different scrimshaw portraits on whale enamel, oftentimes, they painting the those who benefited most from the whale oil business and which can be most chargeable for wiping two species of whales utterly off the planet,” Riley says. He attracts on this custom, too, carving stylized renditions of Exxon chairman John Kenneth Jamieson or Arnold Schwartz, who based Paragon Oil which later offered to Texaco, into the laborious surfaces.
Whether or not depicting a hungover couple or a magnate plummeting into the ocean, Riley strives to make use of satire as a solution to make the consequences of air pollution and the local weather disaster extra accessible. “Utilizing humor typically is a better solution to interact folks in issues which can be too massive to wrap your head round. When speaking about any type of troublesome topic, it’s quite a bit simpler to (use humor to) speak about one thing that’s painful or difficult and to achieve folks and never really feel such as you’re preaching,” he says.
Riley is at present working towards an upcoming present in Los Angeles and on a undertaking centered round quick trend. You possibly can comply with updates and see extra of his scrimshaw sculptures on Instagram.
Element of “Echelon of Uncertainty (Unhealthy Guys)” (2022), salvaged painted plastic in wooden and glass case, 18 x 51 x 6 inches
“No. 108 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2020), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.5 x 4.75 x 2.25 inches
“No. 367 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25”.
“No. 66-P of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2019), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.75 x 7.5 x 3.5 inches
“No. 26 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2020), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.25 x 7.25 x 3.5 inches
“No. 365 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25 inches
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