The Work

Pamela Kouwenhoven
YUASA-X-PRESS, Charge it! series, 2006
Reproduced courtesy of the artist
Photographer: Michal Kluvanek

Pamela Kouwenhoven

Constructed of battery cases salvaged from the slow process of decay, this work sparks reflection on our reckless spending of natural resources. The evanescent empowerment afforded by the credit card, together with the moral bankruptcy of developed world consumerism, drive the work.

The configuration evokes high-rise apartment living, bastions of the powerful, disintegrating into the favelas (Brazilian slums) of the disempowered. Yet the organic forms emerging out of manufactured confines, together with the play of light across and through the structures, all charge our contemplation with hope of redemption suffusing the brittle, plastic cells within which we compartmentalise our lives.

Pamela Kouwenhoven

Paper

The environmental impact

Resources used to make the common lead acid car battery The mineral Galena is the source of lead used for cell plates in a car's battery Sphalerite is the major ore of zinc, also used for car battery cell plates. Anthracite, commonly known as hard coal is used in the manufacture of plastics used to make battery casings. Rocks and Minerals - T. D. Burns The lead acid battery accounts for 64% of worldwide lead usage. The lead smelting process emits lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, selenium, zinc and sulphur dioxide. Lead - From the Boolaroo Smelter to Your car Battery - Theresa Gordon - Lead action News Vol5, no1, 1997.

The majority of lead (60%) used today is not only produced from the mineral Galena but from the recycling of old lead scrap and in particular from the recovery of lead from lead acid batteries.

The Environment Agency UK, 2008