Leeroy New Interview On Public Art, Sustainability, And More

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Aliens exist on earth, and they're made of repurposed materials. At least, that's what the portfolio of sculptures, installations, and wearable pieces of artist Leeroy New would have you believe at first glance. New is Globe Platinum's latest brand ambassador.

The General Santos-born artist has earned international acclaim for pieces that create fantastical scenes in public spaces. New believes art shouldn't be exclusive to art-sanctioned venues such as galleries and museums; in fact, this is a "canon" he wants more people to question. Instead, he favors spaces that remain accessible to people who don't have the time for a museum visit, where anyone can freely explore the alien worlds he creates. And that's how he owns his extraordinary, and shares it with the world.

"Owning the extraordinary means taking control of your passion, redirecting your energy towards something other than what you're used to and your routine—to aspire for a better future, for yourself and for your community."

In line with Globe Platinum's thrust of Owning The Extraordinary, New walks Esquire Philippines through his creative journey and works that are anything but ordinary. He talks about taking ownership of his work, and how doing so helps him inspire others to make a difference in the art scene as well.

"Owning the extraordinary means taking control of your passion, redirecting your energy towards something other than what you're used to and your routine—to aspire for a better future, for yourself and for your community," he explains. "It simply means for me just taking control of your life and your purpose, and steering it towards something extraordinary."

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The Otherworldly Pieces

New's works form pseudo-organic biomes in public spaces across the planet, bringing an intriguing unearthliness to familiar places. They wrap themselves around the facades of buildings, float along the Pasig River, and invade art spaces in New York, Berlin, Paris, and Taiwan. They transform ordinary human beings into creatures of extraterrestrial origin, warping their bodies in ways that challenge conventional ideas of anatomy.

But therein lies a small trick behind New's art. As alien as they seem, a great number of his works draw inspiration from more earth-bound organisms. The parasites that envelop buildings are fantastical re-imaginings of balete trees. The Pasig River installation, Bakawan, borrowed some of its form from river mangroves. Many of the installations, costumes, and performances he's brought to the international stage reflect the sometimes-jarring diversity of shapes we see in insects, microorganisms, and the undersea world.

What makes these pieces feel so otherworldly is the fact that they're made from discards and found objects, a practice that New adopted early on in his career out of necessity.

"I've trained myself to be able to use many different materials, so why not apply these skills and training to address one of the more pressing issues our world is facing?"

"I went through recycling centers during one artist residency in Australia, back in 2009," New shares. "We didn't really have a budget; that's why I ended up there."

He adds, "We got piles of discards for a few dollars, I bought zip ties to go with it, and I weaved something using the pipes we bought."

The people who found interest in his work gravitated to the idea that he was using discards. "Eventually, that was where it was headed in my mind," he shares. "It would always end up leading to strictly using discards."

The Art of Thriving with the Community

By merging organic shapes with materials that are, in essence, contrary to the conditions in which life blossoms, New not only makes natural forms seem alien in origin, he also makes a statement about sustainability in art. By creating alien lifeforms and biomes out of plastic waste, New's work challenges us to build a future that allows life to thrive in spite of the damage we've already done to our planet.

"Even in that small way, we keep ourselves from contributing to waste, more waste production."

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"I've trained myself to be able to use many different materials, so why not apply these skills and training to address one of the more pressing issues our world is facing?," he says.

With sustainability at the forefront of his practice, New and his team have shifted their means of production to make the most out of materials that would otherwise be sitting in dumpsites for hundreds of years. Rather than simply creating an interesting object, New's process is now treated as a hybrid solution to address the sometimes problematic life cycle of everyday objects while creating a community that thrives by creating art out of trash.

"It becomes something that can become a source of livelihood," he says. "We can create different products out of the experiments that we have."

He underscores his plans of involving more people to create a community, creating libraries where they just collect chunks and discards from communities, and opening them up to art educators, creatives, artists, designers, then transforming them.

"Even in that small way, we keep ourselves from contributing to waste, more waste production," he adds.

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The Collectibles That Matter

New's collaboration with The Platinum Series is one of the many ways he hopes to turn that vision into reality all while owning his extraordinary. The artist will be releasing a series of collectibles that are miniaturized versions of two larger installations being built in Ateneo de Manila University and in La Union, in line with Globe Platinum's campaign. Each sculpture will be a futuristic structure made from discarded plastic and other materials.

The one in Ateneo is envisioned as a vertical sculptural farm, while the one in La Union is a cluster of spherical pods that combine to resemble a spaceship.

Roughly 80 to 90 percent of each collectible is composed of plastic scraps from the larger installations. Rather than discard them as waste, New's team will be processing the scraps through a plastic shredder and using the material as filler for the smaller pieces.

Every collectible bought will also be matched with a school kit donation as part of Globe Platinum's #ForFutureHeroes program, allowing disadvantaged children to continue their education at home. The program gives every piece another avenue to positively impact the future, even beyond sustainability.

"I'm one of those kids who started imitating their world as their form of play and I just never stopped."

Growing up, New realized that he tends to be left out of these visions of the future. "We consume the futuristic visions of cultures that have the means to disseminate their dreams of the future on a global scale."

And while no one has an idea of what the future may look like, New believes that we have "the means and the capacity to create our own sci-fi forms, and dictate our own visualizations of the future that speak to us."

"Futures that are conceptualized and made by people from where we are, using techniques and materials that are available to us," he explains.

"I'm one of those kids who started imitating their world as their form of play and I just never stopped. It just evolved and I fed it with new information and ideas, but basically, I just never stopped playing."

New's extraordinary vision for the future may seem alien at first, but it's born from a perspective that looks more closely at the world around us than it does other planets. It takes form as explorations from within rather than speculations fixated on what else is out there. And today, it's focused on building a better world on earth instead of relocating to the stars.

There are aliens on earth, but in Leeroy New's case, these creatures are reflections of who we are, and of what we could achieve together.

"Through this collaboration [with Globe Platinum], I had an opportunity to actually come up with a kind of fragment of the large-scale installations that I make; that I can share with people," he shares. "I've always wanted to be able to do more work that I could actually share."

Learn more about Leeroy New's latest collectible for The Platinum Series here.

Locally Sourced, Globally Lauded: Leeroy New on Making Public Art That Matters

The Otherworldly Pieces

The Art of Thriving with the Community

The Collectibles That Matter