WELCOME TO MAKERS PLACE — a brief introduction to this project that helps oceans stay clean for habitat and species protection from pollution. Makers Place II is already underway; join us on Patreon to support these projects.
The organic design of ‘Makers Place’, photographed just days after building completion.
Makers Place Recycling Studio, Baa Atoll, Maldives.
Two conversations have dominated global discourse in recent years and will continue to do so at an accelerating scale: plastic pollution and global warming driven by carbon emissions.
I founded the Distil Ennui Studio™ in 1990. Since then, I have created and exhibited work internationally while working on community and environmental projects, hosting recycling design workshops, and spearheading an international artist residency programme. Throughout this time, water has remained central to my practice. Witnessing first-hand the effects of pollution, biodiversity loss, and species extinction, I have been a vocal advocate of the 3R strategy — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — from the very beginning.
Sand casting boxes cooling with newly formed aluminium sculptures inside.
It is with great sadness that the drinks industry can be attributed to close to 15% of global warming impacts over the past decade alone. Over 95% of aluminium and plastic packaging from this sector is still buried in landfill, burned, or dumped in the ocean (supporting data here). To put this into daily terms, over 2.3 billion plastic drinks containers are produced every single day.
‘Drink Less’ sculptures made from recycled Coca-Cola aluminium cans.
In the late 1980s, I kayaked alone and unsupported for nine months across the Maldives, creating my own water using only the sun and living within a zero-footprint framework. I distributed hand-built aluminium can crushers to the few hotels operating at the time, proposing that crushed cans be returned home by guests for recycling — an early ethical intervention within tourism.
The hand-built outrigger kayak used to travel across the Maldives.
At the time, most waste was transported to uninhabited islands and buried, accelerating erosion and causing entire islands to disappear during storms. In the 1980s there were close to 6,000 islands; today official figures cite 1,207 — a dramatic reduction driven by waste dumping, sand extraction, and climate change.
In 2017 I returned by kayak to the same locations, creating sculptural and photographic interventions under the project Visions from the Shoreline. Twenty artworks were donated to the Soneva Namoona Foundation, raising $100,000 USD to fund future development.
The donated ‘Visions from the Shoreline’ artworks that funded the project.
Recycling aluminium uses just 1/25th of the energy required to produce it from raw ore; plastic recycling uses approximately 1/20th. Every piece of single-use packaging not recycled compounds the global warming crisis.
Thermal expansion poses a profound threat to the Maldives. As ocean water warms, it expands, contributing significantly to rising sea levels — a greater long-term risk than melting ice alone.
‘The Naive Twins’ — recycled aluminium sculptural works.
Makers Place is a carbon-neutral facility designed from the ground up for island-based methodology. Machinery and processes were hand-fabricated to recycle aluminium and plastic while minimising water use, emissions, and environmental impact.
A Hawksbill sea turtle photographed just metres from the Makers Place recycling studio.
The facility includes closed-loop wash stations, advanced filtration using coconut charcoal, and VOC capture systems to prevent harmful emissions. At the end of their lifecycle, spent filtration materials are sealed into red construction blocks, locking contaminants away permanently.
‘Drink Less’ half-bottle sculpture in recycled aluminium with cedar frame.
In the first three days of operation alone, the facility recycled 15,000 aluminium cans. From these, a series of ‘Drink Less’ sculptures were created, reinterpreting the classic glass Coca-Cola bottle to provoke awareness of the environmental cost of convenience culture.
Newly designed beach-inspired kitchen and bathroom door and drawer handles.
This project exists to enable a better end-of-life for packaging materials and to protect lands where I have advocated for change at community, island, and governmental levels for over 35 years.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. I feel compelled to face a global issue on a personal scale.” — AJH
EDITORS NOTES...
Several works produced during this body of research are available for rights-managed editorial and institutional licensing through The Legacy Collection, Hamilton’s long-running photographic archive.
https://www.distilennui.com/collections/the-legacy-collection-rights-managed-image-licensing
