Guy Keulemans
This Sydney-based designer and artist creates work that promotes the value of repair
Sydney-based designer and artist Guy Keulemans creates work that promotes the value of repair and reuse for a more sustainable design economy.
We rarely repair and reuse objects these days, choosing instead to replace them with new and “better” versions. The significance of objects and the craft of repair have consequently lost their value in today’s world. Sydney-based designer, artist and researcher Guy Keulemans is drawing attention to reuse and repair, and the broader issues of damage, waste and value.
Keulemans started investigating “transformative repair” while studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven 10 years ago. “Transformative repair is the creative reworking of broken, discarded, obsolete objects,” he explains. “Sometimes a broken product is visibly mended to be more beautiful than before. Sometimes it also means the function changes entirely.” The concept has since formed the basis of Keulemans’ studio practice, as he takes on an activist role to challenge assumptions and paradigms of design.
The intention of repair and reuse is to combat some of the environmental impacts of production and consumption. Replacing the cycle of make–use–dispose with a circular economy of make–use–reuse conserves the material and embodied energy of existing products. “We have embraced a break-and-replace mentality around objects that is tremendously wasteful and has huge environmental, social and financial implications. If we can keep products in function for longer, then we lessen the impact on the planet,” says Keulemans.
Repair and reuse were long the norm before industrial production and manufacturing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Objects held more value as people had fewer possessions, and they required a lot of energy to produce. But with mass production and consumption has come a loss of value, and subsequently the loss of repair. “Something needs to shift,” Keulemans says. He has been designing objects that reuse materials or emphasize repair, with each piece informed by, and preserving, its material and cultural history.
In his Archaeologic series, Keulemans draws on artisanal Japanese techniques that have today become an artform, elevated beyond their utilitarian means.
“The intention of repair and reuse is to combat some of the environmental impacts of production and consumption. Replacing the cycle of make– use–dispose with a circular economy of make–use–reuse conserves the material and embodied energy of existing products.”
Kintsugi is a centuries-old method for mending broken ceramics using urushi, a lacquer mixed or dusted with gold or silver. Instead of urushi, Keulemans used photoluminescent pigment to visually accentuate the fractured and graphic nature of the damage and repair made to ceramic vessels crafted by his father-in-law, master ceramicist Kiyotaka Hashimoto. “There is something very visceral, powerful, impactful about broken things,” he says.
The ancient technique of stapling was the most effective means of repairing ceramics until the twentieth century. Keulemans taught himself the craft, stapling broken pieces of a vase together, and highlighting the breaks and repairs through different coloured effects.
Keulemans collaborated with his wife, jewellery designer Kyoko Hashimoto, for a series of Buddhist ritual objects from Japan, such as juzu (Buddhist prayer beads). They redesigned the objects using concrete and fragments of plastic toys to question material and production waste.
In early 2020, Keulemans and designer Trent Jansen received a Linkage Projects grant to test the viability of transformative repair in the market. They will work in partnership with the Australian Design Centre, Jamfactory and Design Tasmania to develop a more sustainable design economy and promote the value of repair and reuse today. A