Recycling may be one of the cool words we should do at the moment, but Ptolemy Elrington has turned it into an art form. Literally. I think it’s great that an existing issue comes out in such a way that it’s a great thing, tucked away on a farm near Portslade in Brighton, he creates sculptures of breathtaking brilliance.
His things are often wild animals, birds, and mysterious creatures of the deep. An Arctic wolf. A horned owl.
What is all the more remarkable is that these creatures are fashioned from recycled materials. Ptolemy doesn’t work in bronze or clay or stone. He works with hubcaps rescued from the roadside, hulking shopping trolleys dredged from the murky riverbank, secondhand car bumpers left to rust in a salvage yard and unwanted scrap metal retrieved from casually discarded domestic appliances.
To him, the world is a giant Meccano set, ripe for the picking. He’s living proof of that old quote that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
