BERT MCLEAN, Fly tip #1, 2024
The English term 'fly tip' stands for illegal waste dumping such as that may be found, for example, near ditches and industrial areas. Unlike cultures in the Caribbean or African countries, waste in the West is not necessarily seen as a raw material with which to make something new. It is rather something inconvenient and to get rid of as quickly as possible and if that is too complicated (or expensive) it will be left somewhere illegally.
Bert McLean makes collages from waste that are put together in a structured way. You may not see this at first, but the frequent use of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines unmistakably creates a fixed grid in the messiness that has been applied to the jute canvas.