This was painted at the same time as 'Laid Back City' in Perth, Western Australia. Could be obtained as a pair with that work or singly. Acrylic on Canvas panel. 36'' x 24''. Over frame 37'' x 25''. Available. Located in England.
Material as Method: The Practice of German Artist Renate Helene Schweizer On the Redefinition of Value, Authorship and Responsibility in Contemporary Art One of the persistent blind spots in contemporary art lies in the conflation of material and value. Judgments continue to be shaped by inherited hierarchies that privilege rarity, permanence and production, while overlooking practices that operate through reuse, circulation and transformation. Renate Helene Schweizer’s work intervenes precisely at this fault line. For more than two decades, she has worked exclusively with used tea bags—not as a symbolic gesture, but as a structural premise. Each element bears the trace of prior use: steeped, handled, discarded. In this sense, the material does not stand in for global relations; it is already embedded within them. Questions of labour, trade, ritual and ecological consequence are not represented but materially inscribed. What emerges from this premise is not a body of discrete works, but a sustained methodological position. Schweizer’s installations function as accumulative systems, composed of thousands of individual units that are collected, connected and reconfigured over time. Contributions from different geographical and social contexts are incorporated into these structures, displacing the notion of singular authorship in favour of a distributed model. The work remains fundamentally open—contingent, processual, and resistant to closure. While her practice intersects with discourses around eco-art and socially engaged art, it exceeds them by relocating sustainability from the level of content to that of operation. It is not a theme to be addressed, but a condition that structures the work from within. In doing so, Schweizer confronts a central contradiction of the contemporary art field: its reliance on the very extractive systems it seeks to critique. Her response is neither representational nor declarative. It is procedural. By working exclusively with materials that have already circulated, she interrupts the demand for constant production and introduces a different temporality—one grounded in duration, attention and relation. The accumulation of used elements becomes a form of resistance to both acceleration and obsolescence. Within this framework, her installations can be understood as propositions for a post-extractive aesthetic. They do not produce images of interconnectedness; they materialize it. Each unit functions as a carrier of situated histories, whose aggregation generates a dense field of ecological, social and cultural entanglements. The exhibition space becomes less a site of display than a site of encounter with these conditions. Crucially, this entails a shift in the position of the viewer. Rather than remaining external, spectators are implicated in the systems the work brings into being. Participation is not an add-on, but constitutive. In this sense, democracy appears not as subject matter but as a mode of operation—unstable, negotiated, and continuously produced through acts of relation and responsibility. Schweizer’s practice cannot be adequately grasped through individual works alone. Its significance lies in the coherence and persistence of its method: a synthesis of material ethics, distributed authorship and relational form. What is at stake is not simply a redefinition of artistic material, but a reconfiguration of artistic agency under the conditions of global interdependence and ecological constraint. Rather than offering a critical image of these conditions, Renate Helene Schweizer develops a practice that operates within them— and, in doing so, begins to shift their terms.” May, 1st, 2026, Red. Kunst.Aktuell
This was inspired by the pristine Balthazar River in central Grenada. An unspoilt area on this beautiful island. Acrylic on canvas. 23.5'' x 19.5''. Over frame. 26'' x 22''. Available. Located in Acapulco, Mexico.
This is a portrait of a bronze sculpture in Old Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, GB. This was created to commemorate the sailing of the first settlers to Australia. There is a similar sculpture in Sydney, Australia. That one is polished bronze. The one in Portsmouth is painted grey to signify the old World. The illustrations left and tight are of Old Portsmouth and Sydney. 36'' x 24'', Over frame 37'' x 25''. Available. Located in England.
This was inspired by Perth, Western Australia in 1979. when there were few high-rise buildings there. 36'' x 24''. over frame 37'' x 25''. Acrylic on Canvas panel. Available. Located in England
