New York artist Hugo McCloud has created a series of artworks that contain no paint or glue, only thousands of small plastic pieces cut from single-use bags and melted together to form a motif.
The series, called Burdened, is on view at Sean Kelly Gallery in Hudson Yards, New York until 27 February and spans 31 original pieces created by McCloud while quarantining in his Mexico studio.
Together shows women carrying goods across the border of Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city in Morocco
To create the collages, which mainly depict scenes of labour, McCloud first traces them onto a wood panel before filling them in with the multicoloured plastic scraps.
These are individually cut from plastic bags and layered on top of each other, much like individual brush strokes, before being fused together with an iron. Burdened is on show at Sean Kelly Gallery
"Due to the nature of the material and its thinness, you can always see underneath, so one colour applied on top of another creates a third colour," McCloud told Dezeen.
"There has to be a lot of forethought and planning before starting. The plastic is fused onto the panel with an iron, there is no removal or covering up, you must know what you're trying to achieve. With paint, there is more freedom for chance and emotions. I do miss some of that but working with the plastic is very meditative, with an understood direction."
Several of the artworks show refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya
The bags c...