‘brush hooks’ by dominic wilcox all images courtesy of dominic wilcox

a group of creatives have been challenged to ‘take an everyday object, remould, rebuild and repurpose it to create an entirely new item, using as little additional materials as possible’ to be displayed as part of the exhibition ‘object abuse’. among them is british designer dominic wilcox who took his starting point from the experience of one forgetting to wash their brushes after use, returning to find that their bristles have become hardened with paint. with this, wilcox has developed ‘brush hooks’, a series of paint brushes whose bristles have been purposely hardened and curved upwards to create wall-mounted hooks to hang one’s belongings.

‘one day I was walking through an art shop and looked at the brushes. they seemed pleasant objects so I decided to come up with something using one of them. I remembered how I used to forget to wash paint brushes after using them and then would find them hard and unusable the next day. after quite a few trials and mistakes I managed to make something useful, a coat hook. handily, there is a hole at the top of the handle for the screw.’ – dominic wilcox

‘object abuse’ is on show at KK outlet, hoxton square, london from september 2nd to 25th, 2011.

dominic wilcox: brush hooks up close

dominic wilcox: brush hooks ‘brush hooks’ in use