Oops, I blogged.

Extra cheese? Yes, please.

Vegan and lactose intolerant folks can relax. Extra Cheeese really has nothing to do with, well, extra cheese. The Sydney-based creative project is about crafting art with heart: taking one man’s trash and breathing new life into it with some clever thinking and redesign.

The first stage of the collective launched in May 2007, with just under 60 artists and designers who each took a humble used pizza box and turned it into something worth hanging on your wall. Check these out, and you’ll see it’s a massive improvement on the greasy, gross thing you leave to congeal until you can be bothered making that long trip to the trash:

_{Extra Cheeese stage one submissions. Picture courtesy of Daniel Dittmar.}

The soon-to-be-launched second stage builds on the first by paradoxically “getting bigger by getting smaller”, says Daniel Dittmar, the 24-year-old creative director behind Extra Cheeese. This time around, there are only 25 contributors, “so the individual work can really breathe amongst the chaos,” he says.

Developing on the theme of reclaimed items, artists and designers in the second stage have been asked to focus their creative energies on found objects. That’s right, found objects. And no, ‘found’ doesn’t mean ‘stolen’ no matter which way you read it. Rather, “[it] could include anything from a discarded table, old books found at a garage sale, or even second-hand clothing left on the side of the street,” says Dittmar.

The concept of reuse is central to the scheme, and if that sounds like hippy-dippy, hug-a-tree crap to you, you can cram it with walnuts: Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp both used found objects in their work, and it’s about time art got eco-friendly. Dittmar cites his days studying a Bachelor of Design at the College of Fine Arts as integral in imbuing his work with sustainability. “[It] was drilled into me from first year,” he says, “And I’m glad for it. I hope that Extra Cheeese helps encourage practising creatives to incorporate these values more into their work.”

The price tag of recycled and found materials probably helps, too, as the collective is primarily a springboard for emerging local talent. “There are some amazing Sydney artists and designers floating around, yet little of their work seems to get recognition,” Dittmar says. “A lot of these artists [and] designers either can’t afford to put on an exhibition, or don’t have the confidence to initiate one at such an early stage. The project aims to introduce the idea that it’s not such an unreachable goal.”

Extra Cheeese is also an exercise in unity and networking the old-fashioned, real-life way, with both artists and designers being asked to contribute. Having moved from a background in arts into the world of design, Dittmar says he’s noticed a wedge between the two social groups, one that Extra Cheeese aims to break down. “I honestly believe that if everyone is feeding off each other, a lot more can be achieved, resulting in an optimised creative output,” he says.

And if that’s not giving you the warm fuzzies, the second stage also fields artists from interstate, putting paid to that old Sydney-Melbourne rivalry: “It’s a load of shit. Every Melbourne artist I’ve met loves working with the people here… and vice versa,” says Dittmar. “The sort of ‘I can do better than you’ attitude between the cities needs to end.”

Whatever, at least Sydney beaches have sand.

Extra Cheeese opens on Friday 3 October 2008, at Medium Rare Gallery, 70 Regent Street, Redfern. Confirmed artists include Minigraff, James Jirat Patradoon and Apeseven, amongst others. You can access the Extra Cheeese website here for more information on the upcoming exhibition, or to browse the gallery from the previous show.