MOUNT PLASTIC (2019 – 2021)

A series of sculptures created from recycled plastic lids and bottle tops, melted onto a wire mesh frame, this work speaks to the environmental challenges we face in a way that is bright and engaging. The synthetic colourful “rock” sculptures contrast the concept of “natural” landscapes with the artificial plastic otherwise destined to be entombed in the earth, but here are instead shaped into objects that, though decorative, prompt a serious environmental reading.

 

Our seas and lands have become a dumping ground for waste, so much plastic that even that which is supposedly recycled still sometimes ends up in the earth or sea. These plastic rocks remind us of the dangers to the environment. Although they are constituted from one of the materials that poses the greatest environmental threat, they are not waste. Rather, they function as playful “warning objects”, vibrant and aesthetically pleasing but nonetheless prompting the viewer to consider the perils and implications of consumption.

 

For me, my artistic process—washing the bottle tops, deciding on the object, the eventual shape and size, or choosing the colour palate— is therapeutic and cathartic. For every bottle top I reuse there is one bottle top less in ever-growing landfill. The plastic I use, I personally recycle or purchase from a validated recycling plant (which uses a community-based development approach).

 

The colour palette is deliberately monochromatic, reflecting the natural variation in plastics of different origins, as the original brands perish beneath the heat to form a new, seemingly organic, shape. I am restricted to working with the range of colours at hand, resulting in “natural” variation, as with actual rocks themselves. The original stories of consumption in each lid or top, from Coca-Cola to Nutella, are erased and reshaped to create a new narrative.