Firstly it is hugely important that we reduce our polluting of the oceans and there are many companies now starting to reuse salvaged ocean plastics in new product manufacture so no new stuff is being made, many artists making use of the things that wash up on shore to make art and get people to notice the problems. Ropes, microscopic bits of plastics and everything else are accumulating in the oceans and starving animals, killing plants and coral, polluting the water and so much more damage besides. As this plastic tide grows it is reaching ever more far away places and its presence in the Arctic has been documented recently.
We have all seen the many images of birds with stomachs full of plastics,children swimming in polluted rivers, pacific ocean garbage gyres and coastlines strewn with plastic. While I am not wholly convinced art can stop these problems necessarily, it does at least go a small way to perhaps enlightening more people to the problems, cleaning up a small part of it and at the very least making a dent in it. Who knows, maybe someone or someones with resources and answers will come across an artists work and be moved to action, perhaps a whole community will be influenced by the work of an artist to change the way they treat their home. And here's a new story today about a sperm whale starving to death while filled with plastics. Every little piece we can take from the ocean and shorelines must be able to help somewhat.
I found the artist Gabriel Orozco who has done a magnificent installation at the Guggenheim with salvaged beach & street trash and I particularly like the way he displays the finds. His work "Asterisms" really grabbed me and is similar to what I would like to do in more detail, very much, however at this point that is but one element in the larger project. The taxonomic approach however is a driving force in this project and one that is always going to have crossovers, I am trying to determine the best ways to classify the larger collection of objects and find out which ones matter, do not matter or are in any way relevant.
Is glass objects a descriptive enough designation? Is Blue objects? Things found on the allotment, found on certain beaches or all beaches as one... I guess this is the problem/point, why am I doing it, what am I looking for or at?
So Ozorco's work relates to my project on a few levels really, firstly I like finding the pieces on the beach, spending hours scouring the sand for finds is a great way to spend an afternoon and I want to maybe do my bit to highlight the problem before all life in the oceans is lost.
His project was a commission from the Guggenheim and was installed in the gallery in Berlin in 2012 and it is mesmerising.
I have been looking at different ways in which people make art and bring attention to the oceans plight and one of my favourites is actually from a friend of mine who recently went to Keelung in Taipei to make little people from the sea debris and rope. I am currently collecting ropes on various beaches, mostly in Wales as it seems there is a huge amount of this stuff washing up there...
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| "Spokesman for the ocean" by Sue Bamford |
Some ropes I collected at Hell's Mouth Beach in Wales last week, it is in an area where a lot of things wash up on the beaches including bits of pottery and glass, ropes of course and other bits and pieces.
So within this project I would like to do a bit more beach collecting and see what is worthy of further investigation or display and go from there. Outside the project and further I would like to do more with this and while I am on Erasmus I think I will see about getting scuba diving training and explore the options for this sort of work a lot more.
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Bower Birds
I have been looking closely at the Bower Bird, in particular the Satin Bower Bird, a native of South eastern Australia like myself this bird is a fascinating creature, unlike myself!
The male collects blue objects and decorates what are called Bowers, ornamental love nests, if you will, designed to attract a mate. When the females approach the males begin dancing and singing and generally showing off their skills and collections, artistry and prowess. No other creature in the world behaves like this funny little guy.
I started to fixate on blue objects and began collecting them recently when I thought to study this bird, funnily enough as my desire for collecting and using found objects was well underway as a child I was often referred to as a bower bird so I really do want to make a display of the blue and some information about them in the exhibition.
Some of the blue stuff I have collected:
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Photographs
One of my favourite things with this project is the set of negatives I found about two years ago in a field in Salford.
I have been thinking of ways to deliberately alter negatives in a similar way and came across this artist from Korea ( thanks Richard for finding this guy) who is taking the idea to painstaking lengths with mould and bacteria he gets from foods.
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| Seung-Hwan Oh |
I like the idea of impermanence in general, all these objects and all these stories of loss and discovery are moments, the things are now useless, floating around with no purpose and the stories and poems are a way of coming to terms with things we can not change so, in a way the photographs and what the represent are the centre piece of the exhibition and I must find a narrative in there. Or create one.
