When Oli Reade’s uncle passed him a bottle of salvaged ink to muck
around with, he didn’t think too much of it – after all, every artist
appreciates free supplies. Then he learned there was 80,000 litres
of the stuff, just sitting in tanks on the outskirts of Melbourne.
Oli’s uncle, a chemist at the Close The Loop recycling facility, had
unwittingly handed him a business plan. “The ink is a by-product
of discarded printer cartridges they crush at the plant,” Oli explains.
“They can reuse the plastic in road bitumen, but have no use for the
ink. So heaps has just been collected over time and burned off
as energy every now and then.”
Once the initial excitement over a potentially endless supply of free
ink had passed, Oli and close friend Mike Eleven decided to take
things one step further. In 2017, they launched Lousy – a range of
affordable artist inks and fine liners made from the recycled inkjet
cartridges. “We saw the material and were like, ‘This is great! Why
aren’t more people using it?’” Mike says.
The pair cooked up the self-deprecating name during a late-night
brainstorm in their sharehouse lounge room, then quickly got around
to spreading the word. They handed more than 50 artist friends
bottles of Lousy ink, then staged a group exhibition at a local gallery,
featuring 160-plus works that proved just what could be done with
a so-called ‘waste product’.“We had people water it down with watercolours; use it with brushes;
experiment with colour-bleeding; use it in airbrushing,” Oli says.
“After that group show, we realised we might be onto something,”
Mike adds. “We were like, ‘Was that actually made with our ink?’”
So far, artists have been more than willing to embrace Lousy ink’s
left-of-centre properties. “It’s a lot thinner than artisan inks,” Mike
says. “But it’s really flexible and, being made for printers, dries really
fast, too.” Recalling their experience as young artists scouring around
for cheap art supplies, Mike and Oli keep Lousy prices low, to ensure
students and other emerging artists can easily get their hands on it.
Just one year in, Lousy has swiftly picked up steam, with folks excited
at the prospect of a cheap and green ink product. Mike suggests the
fortuitous timing of their launch may have had something to do with
this – it took place soon after the ABC series War on Waste first aired.
He also credits growing conversations within the arts industry about
the substantial resources required to create art for art’s sake.
But despite an explosion of sustainable businesses in the creative
world and beyond, Oli and Mike are reticent to go hard marketing
themselves as ‘eco-conscious’. They’re not trying to compete with
artisan inks, either. In fact, their main mission is less business-
oriented, and more about getting the entire 80,000 litres of ink into
artists’ hands, before the collection facility can no longer afford to
store it and is forced to burn it up.
This isn’t necessarily an easy task, especially given Lousy remains a
part-time project for both gents. Oli is a full-time artist, and Mike a
graphic designer by day. Both come from street art backgrounds (they
met as teenagers on a graffiti forum), so it’s not surprising they’re
more comfortable staging art shows than donning suits and making
business deals. If they had to change one thing about running Lousy,
though, it’d be the bottling process.
“Lousy is still a two-man operation,” Mike explains. “So we drive out
to the recycling facility ourselves and siphon the ink into our own giant
water bottles.” “One time, I managed to get a mouthful of it,” Oli says,
laughing. “We’re definitely working on not doing that anymore.”lousy ink
MIKE ELEVEN AND OLI READE TAKE INK
FROM YOUR PRINTER TO A GALLERY WALL.Wor d s Emma Do
PhotoMia Mala McDonaldour project