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Joost Vermeer (1997) often works with found and collected materials from skips on building sites. He is particularly drawn to fragmented pieces: elements that were once part of a complete whole. The act of collecting and examining these materials forms the starting point for his installations. Vermeer is interested in the ‘why’ behind discarded materials. Together, they constitute a residue of the city – elements that would not normally be found together. Vermeer explains: ‘The site of decay suddenly becomes visible in a different way, revealing the human urge to transform: everyone, consciously or unconsciously, wants to add their own material layer to their living environment.’ Working with materials that carry a history, rather than new materials, is essential to his practice.
In his work, Vermeer explores the interplay between personal snapshots and the everyday reality. He prints his own photographs onto found tiles, which he smashes and places back in a mould. In the series Container (2026), this process results in artefacts of a vanished place: a once-discarded environment is reshaped into a sculpture, encased in new layers. In doing so, Vermeer raises the question of whether materials can carry memories. He speculates about their origins: what a fragment has witnessed, and what led to its eventual replacement. Can construction skips be understood as archives of memories that were once interwoven with the living environment? For Vermeer, the tension between the intimate service a material once provided and its subsequent abandonment in a public skip serves as a metaphor for the way humans relate to their surroundings.
Written by Kelly-ann van Steveninck