You're listening to the Decarbonisation Dialogue,
a podcast from Salix. Welcome to the Decarbonisation
Dialogue. I am Hannah Walker and I believe that
the best way to communicate a message is by being
passionate about what you are talking about.
Today I have... Chris Gilmore with me from Vector
Sets. Chris Gilmore is more commonly known as
a British sculptor based in Manchester, known
for his sculptures that use cardboard to create
everyday objects in life -size scale. Chris founded
Vector Sets with producer Tom Henderson to offer
paper -based sustainable sets that are indistinguishable
from conventional wooden sets. Vector Sets was
launched in 2022 and drawing on Chris's PhD research
and Tom's experience as a producer. vector sets
use cutting edge engineered paper boards which
offer comparable strength to wood but are 80
% lighter apparently and quicker to set up, easy
to move and 100 % recyclable. Over the last year
these sets have been successfully used in programs
for BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and more as well as adverts.
So I can't wait to start talking to Chris. Welcome
to Chris. Hi, lovely to be here. Thank you. Big
question and it's a big question to start but
your inspiration as an artist and sculptor and
it'd be nice also to talk about your heroes because
I know Anish Kapoor, Andy Goldsworthy, Bill Woodrow,
those kind of people mean something to you but
let's start with you. Talk about where this inspiration
comes from. Well I've always enjoyed making things
and then I studied art at school and then I was
actually thinking of becoming an illustrator.
just because I'd never really come across sculpture
and then did a foundation course, tried sculpture
and absolutely loved it and ended up doing a
degree course in Bristol called Art in Social
Context which was a fine art course but aimed
at collaborative art and public art and socially
engaged art. Through doing that I ended up doing
a lot of workshops and working with community
groups and young people which meant finding materials
that were cheap because there's never any funding
and easy to use. and ideally ecological. I mean
this was 30 odd years ago so the green movement
was a bit less developed than it is now. I was
already using wood in my own work and I was actually
using cardboard to make the templates and then
realised that you could just use cardboard and
not bother with the wood and it still had a really
interesting effect. Started seeing an Italian
lady who's now my wife. She'd invited me to Italy,
some friends of hers had invited me to take part
in a show. I only had a few days so I made a
self -portrait of myself on a Vespa in cardboard
and that went to the exhibition and then through
various twists and turns I ended up getting invited
to work with a gallery in Padua. By this time
I'd moved to Italy and then I spent the next
nearly 30 years as a fine art sculptor working
with cardboard. It started from a kind of interest
in the material. almost from its tactile quality
that it was just a nice thing to work with. And
then the more I got into it, the more the kind
of meaning behind it and the ecological aspect
and the idea of commerce that's contained in
packaging and things being shipped around. So
that's where the cardboard sculpture came from.
Then it became a research going on over the years
to find ways of doing things. You mentioned the
wheelchair at the start. That was part of a series
that included some bicycles. And it took about
three years of research to work out how to make
the spokes out of paper, how to make the chains
and the bicycle, how to make them stand up. So
as well as it being a sculptural artistic work,
there's also a lot of technical thinking behind
it, how to use the different materials. And that's
how my little cardboard developed. So those large,
we'll talk about the sculpture for a moment,
those large pieces that you've got, I mean, I
would think there was a piano that was suspended.
In a space and then you'll see as you say the
wheelchair how long does it take you for example
to make that fear 500 out of cardboard because
I've studied and studied and looked at these
sculptures and they're the detail and you've
just said it takes you a while to source those
materials these aren't just couple boxes are
they that we use for our. No they're they are
literally couple boxes. The question gets asked
every time. Yes, they are all made of cardboard.
It's just cardboard and glue. That was the discipline
of the work. There was only ever cardboard and
glue. It's not like paper mache. They're not
molded. It's just cardboard boxes that are cut
up and glued together. Cardboard does have this
malleable quality that you can shape it in a
way that you can't with thick card or paper.
It'll just crumble, but corrugated cardboard
will kind of bend in a different way. When I
was working completely on the sculpture, we would
do... maybe five or six art fairs a year around
Europe, around Italy, in Miami, in New York,
London. So I would have generally one big piece
at each of those and then other smaller pieces
like the guitars and typewriters and things.
So it was a very much full -time job. But the
cars generally take about three months or so.
I mean, a lot quicker than wood or marble. Are
you working on your own in the studio? Generally,
I had a couple of assistants. prepare things.
But I lived in a town called Udine in northeast
Italy, it's between Venice and Trieste, and it's
a lovely little town. On Friday nights, all the
shops in the centre put their recycling out,
so I would go around on a Friday night and load
up on cardboard boxes. That's kind of part of
the work, so the boxes are left, you'll see the
labels and tickets and bits of tape and things,
and it's all the memory of the box and what was
in it. So sometimes there's little games being
played the thing that was in the box turning
into the object that is made of and this kind
of stuff. Okay. So those materials are so discarded,
aren't they? We don't think of them. And there's
the cardboard boxes that you picked up from,
but there's also, of course, a lot of other kinds
of packaging, isn't there, today? Did you ever
make, you're making use of, like, when you go
to the supermarket, for example, today we talk
a lot, don't we, about unnecessary packaging
around the items that we buy? The first show
that had the piano in, there was a second part
of that show, which you don't really see so much
in the photos, but they were little cathedrals
made of packaging. So they were cornflakes boxes
and cigarette boxes. And there was one was made
from packageurex, which was the image rights
were bought by the young Catholics of Germany,
and they used it as an advertising campaign.
But my thinking with that was you've got so much
money and energy and creativity invested in advertising
to sell us things in a way that that investment
was in faith and creating beautiful things back
in the past. Yeah, as you say, it's a material
that's discarded and you get these Amazon boxes
or you've got the packaging that you've taken
things out of at home and you've got to get rid
of it and take the paper recycling down. It's
a nuisance and it's something that's present
but you don't really think about it. I was fascinated
with the details of things. I'd look into the
extreme details of how the engine was on the
car or how the keys worked for the typewriter.
I just like taking things apart and seeing how
they work. But it created this reaction, which
is amazing. I've always loved this. So there's
a coffee pot, a mocha. You know, those kind of
hexagonal, aluminium things are made from those.
And everybody in Italy's got one. Everybody knows
it. Every house has got one. Used every day.
But because it was made in cardboard, people
would look at it. Oh, look, it's got the screw
and it's got the little valve. Look at the handle.
and they were seeing something that they see
every day in a new way yes yes they were observing
details that they would never you can't you don't
pick up the teapot oh look yes but because it's
translated into this other material because there's
this it's almost like a drawing that highlights
details and it gives us a new new eyes a new
way of looking a new vision a new way of looking
at something that as you say is a normal household
object and in certainly in terms of that packaging
it's spring making something beautiful out of
something that we might otherwise kind of throw
away and just for a moment the so you mentioned
being socially engaged and being involved in
workshops and that was very much I think um ingrained
at art school wasn't it and that that sense that
you've got to be involved in the community or
pay something back. Do you think that that was
ingrained very early on and has had an influence
on the way you've set up vector sets and now
what you're doing? Because you've moved from
creating these amazing sculptures that are beautiful
items to still creating beautiful items but they're
being used on film sets. There's a lot of questions
there but if you could tell us a little bit about
vector sets and where that idea comes from and
does that take you back to that idea that we
need to be Because, I mean, climate change is
not new. We've been talking about sustainability,
we've been talking about climate change for years.
And even back then it might not have been spoken
about as much, but it certainly has been on the
agenda. So if you could tell us a little bit
about your thinking behind vector sets and how
that initial care and social responsibility is
kind of built into that. So when I was a teenager,
I was very passionate about people being involved
in art. I think I felt there was a lot of elitism
in galleries. I was in Manchester, we'd go to
London, you'd go around, you know, the big name
galleries and it was always very frosty and this
is for, you know, people that are like you and
I felt that creativity and imagination and making
beautiful things should be for everyone. So I...
was really excited to do the course that I did
at Bristol because it was about that kind of
engagement and letting people bring out the creativity
and getting people involved and making things
and it wasn't fine art, it wasn't, it didn't
need to be perfect, it was about the process
and about getting people involved. I don't think
there was any particular ecological basis to
it at the time using cardboard, it was just,
it was free and it was easy to use and you could
use it with children, you could use it with disabled
people and you could use it with anyone, it was
easy to get hold of. And I think also it's not
a fancy material. I think if you'd gone in with
fine art materials, with paints or with serious
art stuff, then people aren't anxious about it.
Whereas this is a cardboard box, you make a mistake
where you get a cardboard box. So it was that
accessibility that interested me. Through the
years, it's always been brought up, is it ecological
art? Are you recycling these things? I would
always stop people and say, it's not recycling,
because recycling is where you take the paper
and you turn it back to pulp. You make new paper
and it's used for something else. This is an
interruption. It's taking the material, reusing
it, and it's transforming it into something else.
It's not really recycling. So the ecological
side of it is asking a question rather than being
political. And I think that's where I find myself
with the question of sustainability with vector
sets. Vector sets... kind of started during the
lockdown. I had time on my hands, I'd been wanting
to do a PhD for ages. I found a professor at
Lancaster, Stuart Walker, who was excited about
the things I was talking about and he agreed
to supervise the supervision, supervise the PhD,
sorry, started there during lockdown. I was originally
looking at museums and how you might use cardboard
in museums to, like I said, with a mock, to show
things a different way and give a different perception
to the objects that were there. And there was
a sustainability side to it. I've done a lot
of work with museums from the workshop side,
and they're always concerned about sustainability.
I think the Natural History Museum declared a
climate emergency six, seven years ago, and they
were well ahead of the curve on that. By chance,
at the end of the lockdown, I was invited to
do an advert, to do the sets for an advert. And
I'd done advertising stuff before, which was
either explicitly cardboard. Christmas campaign
for the post office which was made to look like
cardboard boxes or it was Because it's quick
and cheap. So I've done some kind of London skylines
in cardboard boxes, but this was the first time
I'd done a Whole set for an advert just out of
paper and it was he was kind of out of necessity
Because it was hard to get wood at the end of
the lockdown there were no carpenters available
and this was a just a Quick and easy solution
to get by but as we were doing one of the pieces
that I've made was a lift And the day after I
was chatting with another art director, he said,
we just made a lift. What, a lift that goes up
and down? What are you talking about? No, it's
just the doors. The doors that slide. We did
the same thing, the sliding doors, but it cost
us £15 ,000. It took five guys to move it with
a forklift and it was used for a day and then
we scrapped it. Which really got me thinking
about the amount of waste in film and TV and
is, I mean, this is part of the research of the
BHT, is just the... horrendous way these things
are done an advert they'll build a set takes
two or three days to build it and you've got
MDF and wood and skirting board and plaster and
window frames and carpet and all this kind of
stuff and then as soon as the shoot's finished
it's smashed up and it goes in the skip and it's
almost never recycled and I've had worked with
people to try and recycle conventional sets and
it's really hard because Once they're painted
and screwed together, you damage them taking
the part. They're very hard to reuse. And unless
somebody wants exactly that thing that you've
just made, they're never going to use it, and
then you've got to store it. It is a problem.
And you also get lots of mixed materials. So
there'll be styrene, and expanded foam, and plastics,
and metal, and wood, and plywood, and everything
mixing together. And it's going to landfill.
BAFTA's wing of Albert that does the sustainability
stuff did a lot of work on this. They've just
brought a new report. And they reckon it's a
minimum of a tonne for an advert of physical
waste. And films can be hundreds, thousands and
thousands. Which is going to landfill. Whilst
the paper sets don't cover everything, just starting
that conversation, asking that question, presenting
the thing where you go, well, this scene that's
going to be on screen for eight seconds, I understand
you need a set, but does it have to be made of
MDF and plywood and timber? and take days and
involve real tiles stuck on, or could we print
the tiles and emboss them? Is there a way of
doing it where you could use lighter materials,
lighter in the sense of physically lighter, but
also the ecological impact is lighter? And that
was where the research started and then... We're
now using the material that we've branded as
vector board which is an engineered paper board
which is, he says, like an MDF substituted really
tough. So this is the really tough material.
So for your sets, and I really want to talk about
some of these sets and the challenges around
that, the new material that you're using which
as you say is like wood and is lighter but it
is 100 % recyclable, you're not collecting that
from shops anymore on factories and street corners
are you? I mean you're producing that, yes. Yeah,
I know we've gone into quite technical materials,
but it's an interesting thing because I'm known
as a cardboard artist and I've been involved
in things with Hewlett -Packard and with cardboard
manufacturers and box factories and also just
scrounging materials for workshops. I'd go to
a cardboard factory and ask them to have some
materials, show them my work and they've always
been really enthusiastic and really supportive.
And this engineered board was around 20 years
ago maybe. but was really expensive and really
hard to find. And now we've got a supplier that
manufactures it and it's amazing stuff. It's
really strong. It's a reliable source, but it
is quite a specific material. And so it's strong.
It's an alternative and it's obviously cheaper
for the production crews to use than, as you
say, using all these other materials that are
not sustainable and just going to go into landfill,
et cetera. What happens to your sets after they're
done with them? Do they come back to you? What
happens to that? It depends on what they want
to do with it. We have a large -ish factory in
Manchester. Just this year got our own printer
and cutting machine so we can manufacture in
-house. Previously we were working with other
factories to make stuff. But we've always offered
to recycle the sets. So we work with a charity
in Manchester that recycles paper. So we'll take
our stuff there to be recycled. I mean the board
we're using is because it's it doesn't actually
have very people say is it recycled board which
it has a small amount of recycled material but
it's mainly virgin fiber which makes it very
strong but it also means it can be recycled up
to seven times so it's a really high value fiber
for recycling. This charity is very happy to
have it. We will either reuse them so sometimes
we'll repaint flats and make other things. or
we give them to film schools or we give them
to charities. We try and find a home for them
and if they can't be rehomed then we'll recycle
them. Sometimes the production itself will deal
with that and it is always a cost for them to
get skips in at the end of a production to get
rid of it so if it's recyclable that brings their
cost down a little bit because put in the paper
recycling. And certainly small things we've done
they can literally be chopped up and put in with
your paper waste so it makes life a lot easier.
And in terms of where they're going, your sets,
are they now going all over the world or was
this primarily the UK? How far afield do your
sets go? Mainly UK. We have done a lot abroad.
So we did the desks for the BBC for the Women's
World Cup when it was in Australia. They were
actually talking about making the desks together,
flying them out and we felt as a sustainable
company that was ridiculous. So we found a partner
in Australia who we sent the designs, they made
them up, delivered them. We've done that a few
times. I've worked with a factory in Barcelona,
one in Berlin. We've sort of hijacked the technology
that's used for point -of -sale displays and
for packaging. So the machinery is being used
for other things. It needs a bit of tweaking
and we work with the factories that we collaborate
with to get them to do the cutting because they're
making up more boxes. It's very ice -spec so
we'll work with them to get the settings right
and make sure the colours are printed correctly,
this kind of stuff. But we can use other factories
abroad. So that's a real resource isn't it and
also using, as you say, the technologies that
already exist but using it in a different way.
Now the sets, you've mentioned Women's World
Cup and I know you've worked on many other sets.
When you look at TV or when you go to the movies
and you see those films, are there any sets that
you would particularly love to create out of
this material? We were invited to do a submarine
set a while back, which was in Czech Republic,
and we'd kind of lined the factory to do it there,
and then there wasn't really enough time, and
because of logistics, it didn't happen. But I
think that'd be a really nice one for us, or
a spaceship. But the stuffing palm would... His
spaceship related space space franchise So that's
it's sort of the holy trinity that for me. I've
been on the blue beater. Yes worked on Star Wars
I need to do Doctor Who now. So we've been speaking
to Doctor Who and hopefully they can... Fantastic.
Oh, we'll be watching it. I mean, for the viewer...
But for the normal, you know, for someone sitting
down to watch the small screen, you know, the
TV, would they notice? Do you expect people to
notice or hopefully not? Yes, yes, yes. Is there
any particular set that you would say or work
that you would say, no, that is not possible
or you can't do or it wouldn't do it justice
or what for whatever reason? Absolutely, it doesn't
do everything. And one of the issues we have
is that there are big construction companies
that make sets for film and TV. They use conventional
materials. Things we have to fight against when
we start talking about paper sets or cardboard
sets. Oh, it's going to be wobbly. It's going
to fall over and it's going to look like a rug,
right? I think there was a great story. So we
did an advert for JD Sports. It was a sports
dressing room. They were filming down in London.
We went down and set it up. And I'd come down
to get some lunch. And as I was at the lunch
queue, somebody was talking, oh, it's a Dutch
film crew, the director's here. He's not happy
about these paper sets. He doesn't want to use
paper sets. And I could kind of hear this muttering
in the background that something had gone wrong.
Went up to see them. And they were in the studio.
So is there a problem with the paper sets here?
I'm not sure about this paper set. I don't think
it's going to work. So we're, you're sitting
on it. So is this it? And they were actually
in it. That is absolutely amazing. What a clever
way to show off just how incredible a cardboard
set can be. I'd love to hear more about their
reactions and more about your projects. But for
now, we're out of time. Please come back, Chris.
Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Thank you to the incredible Chris Gilmore for
providing such insight. There can be no doubt
that climate change is the biggest challenge
of our time. Today, we must reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to slow global warming. Today we
must act for tomorrow, adjusting our lifestyles
to current and future impacts of climate change.
Today we must use our collective wisdom to deliver
on our climate commitments. Today we work for
tomorrow's world. Don't forget to subscribe to
our podcast channels and email us at podcast
at salixfinance .co .uk and tell us your views
and news. Thank you and big thanks once again
to Chris Gilmore. Lovely to be here. You've been
listening to the Decarbonisation Dialogue, a
podcast from Salix. For more information about
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