Presenting Progress in HE Lounge

 

This week we exhibited our progress in our projects so far. I printed my microscope images as well as some secondary research images and artists, then 'littered' the board with all the little ceramic nerikomi pieces I have made. I wanted it too look kind of overwhelming and busy to reflect the saturation of litter and microplastics in the ocean. I also made a montage of all the bits of plastic I collected at the beach to display along side it, and an arrangement of the larger ceramic pieces that I've done. My working title is 'plastic beach' a reference to the Gorillaz song, and a very real description of the state of our coastlines right now. I also put out my first cast juice carton but decided to take it away after we presented our work so that it wouldn't get broken or stolen, and also because it was only bisque fired and I wanted to glaze it. People seemed to find it interesting and were intrigued by the ceramic carton which I am working on doing lots more of, I think there is often power in the repetition of unremarkable objects. It was also good to see what other people have been doing and hear their ideas.

In this collage I wanted to give people a snapshot of the reality we face; these pieces of plastic were from a very small area of a beach and there was a lot more that I didn't pick up due to being too big. I tried to arrange the pieces in a kind of diagonal path to create a sense of movement like a current or wave, with smaller pieces around the edges to show how plastics break down into little pieces meaning they can infiltrate further into nature, scattering into every corner of the world. It's not really my favourite piece but I feel good that I got to use the litter for something and hopefully create some awareness of the plastic issue. Most of the litter I found in the sand was pieces of rope, and research has found the fishing industry to be one of the most prolific contributors of ocean plastic pollution: Juvenio Guerra writes that 'more than 100 million pounds of plastic pollution enters the ocean each year from lost fishing gear' in an article on the issue, which you can read here: https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/ca-ocean-plastic/.

Social changes are currently underway as people have found out the true cost of eating sea-food as the information about the shocking realities of commercial fishing is now readily available for the public, and pushed by environmental activists such as EXTINCTION REBELLION, with social media acting as a catalyst. Netiflix released a documentary called 'Seaspiracy' in 2021 that shocked audiences resulting in shifts in consumer behaviour; people started abstaining from eating fish entirely but were encouraged by Green Peace to continue eating traditionally harvested fish as an alternative. I think it's amazing how much difference it can make when people are presented with the brutal realities of certain global issues like this, it's often not enough to just hear about it, we have to see it for ourselves to feel truly impacted, so spreading awareness is a clear path to change.