<p>Clean-Up-Workers (Deluxe Series), (2021-2026) is an autoethnographic, practice-led research project situated within contemporary glass art. The resulting mixed-media outcomes have a deliberate aesthetic of low-tech constructions, combining discarded items with kiln-formed cast and blown glass processes. Narratives of value and abjection are embedded within the work through the fabrication of dysfunctional vacuum cleaners, which operate as both material and conceptual devices. The research functions as a critical methodology by reconfiguring material language through the exploration and application of waste aesthetics, and shifting notions of material and social value. In doing so, it challenges and unsettles the field’s dominant technical conventions and material hierarchies. By exhibiting the work, the use-time of the once defunct objects and materials has been extended, affording them a second life, a form of redemption.</p>