Yuke Liu

Yuke Liu is a CME (Colour, Material, Experience) practitioner and product designer from Chongqing, China. Prior to pursuing her MA in Printed Textiles at Royal College of art, Yuke completed a BFA in Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, graduating as an outstanding scholar.

Yuke interned at Josh Owen LLC, Tommy Hilfiger and Proenza Schouler. The experience of working in both company and studio-based design workspaces encouraged her to develop further understanding of design itself. The opportunity of working together with companies such as Areaware, Nambé, and Adventure audio helped her learn how to incorporate design into daily lives and environment care.

Yuke’s works often emphasise the importance of sustainability by using recycled or natural materials. She is interested in the topic of flatness and fixed viewpoint in contemporary society and her works aim to evoke imagination and provide a more interactive experience by combining textiles, new media, and product design.

Award:

Priestman Goode x RCA: Re-thinking single-use plastic, Highly Commended, 2021

Exhibition:

Absent Traces, London Craft Week, 2022

RCA WIP show, 2022

Priestman Goode X RCA: Precious Waste - Single Use Plastics Re-born, London Design Festival, 2021

The Future of Coral – Design the interactive educational experience

Yuke’s project aims to transform recycled single-use plastics into aesthetic design objects and educational experience. She focuses on raising the awareness of plastic pollution and addressing the importance of sustainability in textiles.

How can textile design enrich our everyday experience and understanding of materials?

Inspired by relational aesthetics and beautiful provocation in contemporary art, Yuke explores interaction between users, material and environment to build closer relationship and playful experience between human and textile design. In Yuke’s practice, she transforms the recycled single-use fruit net foams into The Future of Coral installations and Paint with Plastics workshop, providing the interactions with materials while facilitating the sensibility of the damages caused by single-use plastics. She believes that tangible experience is more beneficial and memorable than mediated experience.

Because of Covid-19, people’s dependence on single-use plastics has become more unmanageable, and plastic pollution is everywhere: from human body through the food chain to the more remote ocean side. Yuke collected many single-use plastics in her everyday life, especially the EPE (expanded polyethylene) fruit net foam from local Asian markets and local plastic recycling centres in London. Yuke only uses one recycled single-use plastics (EPE) for her current project in order to easily recycle them afterwards.

Yuke is interested in the topic of flatness and fixed viewpoint in contemporary society. Flatness and fixed viewpoint limit multiple perspectives to single point of view. This reductive method of perceiving the world is the danger of flatness. In Yuke’s future practice, she will continue exploring different ways to transform overlooked details in everyday life into playful, imaginable design experience, to help people open-up imagination and to preserve things differently.

EPE (Expand Polyethylene) is a good material for protective packaging. It’s light, flexible, waterproof, brightly coloured and fully recyclable. I collected hundreds of single-used EPE fruit net foams from the Asian market in London to develop my project.

Colour study - Explore different colour combinations and portions

Techniques – Weaving, Knotting, Intersecting, Deconstructing, Gluing, Cutting

Growing plastic coral reefs in the dark environment

Growing plastic coral reefs (Video, 30s)

Plastic coral reefs “underwater” (Video, 50s)

Medium:

Recycled EPE fruit net foam

Size:

120cm x 80cm

The Future of Coral, Recycled EPE fruit net foam

The Future of Coral is a series sculptures made of recycled single-use plastics (EPE fruit net foam). Inspired by the beautiful provocation and relational aesthetics in contemporary art, The Future of Coral aims to facilitate the sensibility that the plastic pollution has caused the death of large numbers of coral reefs in the ocean. It is our responsibility to live eco-friendly by taking small steps, from recycling plastic to reusing them.

Medium:

Recycled EPE fruit net foam

Size:

Size varies

coral reef Installation plastic Recycle Sculpture Sustainability SustainLab22 Upcycling

Colour palette

Grainy plastic painting - Coral reefs

Medium:

Recycled EPE fruit net foam

Size:

60cm X 60cm

Painting plastic Recycle Reuse Sustainability SustainLab22 Upcycling

Workshop booklet: Paint with Plastics

Workshop Test (Video,45s)

Workshop results

Paint with Plastics is an educational workshop using recycled EPE (expanded polyethylene) flakes. The EPE flakes are recycled from local Asian markets and local recycling centres in London. The purpose of the workshop is to encourage creativity, raise awareness of plastic pollution, and cultivate responsibility for recycling in everyday life. During the workshop, participants will design their own patterns by drawing, colouring, gluing, painting, and recycling with EPE flakes. Enjoy and have fun!

Creativity plastic Playful Recycle Reuse Sustainability SustainLab22 Upcycling Workshop

Yuke Liu

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Royal College of Art