Creating art from plastic waste

By Alison Hill

Three Australian artists are using plastic waste to create beauty and inspire action for change.

The World Economic Forum has predicted that by 2050 our oceans will contain more plastic mass than fish mass. What do you do when the volume of plastic waste on your local beach seems overwhelming? Three Australian artists have responded with works that use plastic waste to create beauty and inspire action for change.


When artist Rox De Luca (pictured above) finds plastic objects on the beach, she picks it up, takes it home to clean and sort and turns it into beautiful art works that spark conversations about plastics in our oceans. Her work was recently on exhibition in Sydney.



Walking through De Luca’s exhibition Still gleaning for plastics, on the beach is to experience both wonder and grief. It’s beautiful: delicate wreaths hang in the high-ceilinged space in the Articulate Project Space in Leichhardt, throwing soft, intricate shadows on the walls. The loops and crowns, garlands and twirls, are also disconcerting. Get up close and you see they are made of hundreds and hundreds of bits of discarded plastic.


The first work in the exhibition is striking in its timeliness. A pink ball, its surface studded with knobbly outgrowths, hangs from a coral-like clump of plastic tags. A little pink monkey covers it eyes. See no evil. ‘It came about by me finding the little ball at Rose Bay beach in March, right at the start of the pandemic,’ says De Luca. ‘The little monkey I had in my studio. The other pink elements are security seals from the aviation industry.’


Tristeza y coronavirus (Sadness and Corona) 2020

Photograph by Rox de Luca


De Luca shows me some of the items she has collected on her almost daily gleaning walks on Sydney’s Bondi and Rose Bay beaches. I recognise a mascara wand, a pot plant hanger, a coffee cup lid and dozens of plastic ties. All this plastic detritus is multiplied by thousands in this white-walled warehouse space.



The dissonance is intentional. De Luca uses the ambiguous feelings raised by the beauty of the works and the horror of the volume of plastic waste to stimulate people to think about their attitudes and behaviour. ‘Viewers ask questions and we strike up conversations about the bigger issues around waste and plastics in their lives,’ she says.

 

Totems from the beach

John Dahlsen is perhaps Australia’s best-known environmental artist. He won the Wynne Prize in 2000 for his Thong Totems, made from discarded rubber thongs. He lives in Byron Bay, where he scours the beaches for plastic fragments, bags, discarded rope and other materials for his creations. His most recent works, the Gyre series, use microplastics to draw attention to the fact that on average, humans ingest about 2000 tiny pieces of plastic each week

Self Portrait with Unintentionally Ingested Micro Plastics

John Dahlsen 2020


‘The dumping of thousands of tonnes of plastics has been expressed in my artworks. And yet, despite my outrage at this environmental vandalism, I returned to the beach daily to find more pieces. In an uncanny way, these plastics, as I sorted them and arranged them in my studio, took on an unspeakable, indefinable and quite a magical beauty,’ he said.


He told Oceanic Global: ’Damage to the environment and economic choices by the government and big business continue to challenge the ideals of environmentalism. The art protests against recklessness on the part of policymakers, while building an aesthetic appreciation of the artwork produced, contributing to new ways of seeing environmental problems.’ 

Dahlsen has recently produced the Pacific Garbage Patch series highlighting the vast drifts of microplastics in our oceans. He says people are often awakened by seeing his found plastic works and then encountering volumes of plastic waste when walking on the beach. The beauty of art leads to important conversations.


How to take action

For Rox De Luca, these conversations often lead to questions: how can people take direct action? Can they join a gleaning walk on a beach? Can they give De Luca the waste plastic they collect? ‘Its building a community of caring participants and cleaning up the mess of all of us,’ she says.


She connects with other beachcombers on her walks. ‘They’re happy to hand me material, which is great, it means I can just incorporate their things. On any walk I will pick up at least twenty lids.’ De Luca cleans, sorts and stores the plastic detritus in her home studio, and then assembles the pieces into works such as her loops and garlands.


What goes through her mind as she sorts the plastic waste she collects? ‘It’s mixed emotions,’ she says. ‘I’m walking along the ocean, a place of beauty, often solo, so it is like a meditation, fresh air, exercise. But I can be sad and very concerned at the amount, the seemingly unstoppable volume of waste I continue to collect.’


‘I often get frustrated. Especially when people see me picking up and they say things like, “Good on ya luv” or “Here’s some more,” and try to give me the rubbish. Or they say there aren’t any rubbish bins around. But I say, “hey, I take my rubbish home.”’

‘But also, thankfully, there are some folks that are genuinely grateful, and we strike up conversations about our collective sadness and concerns about the excess of plastic waste.’


De Luca also runs workshops in which participants of all ages can be part of a gleaning walk and use their findings to create things while pondering the issue of plastic waste. ‘Workshops are about playing, but create a place for talking and learning about plastics – learning about how to separate the waste properly for example, and how we can negotiate their place in our lives in an intelligent and sustainable way.’


Workshops are also the way artists Matt Aberline  and Maurice Goldberg tackle waste, pollution and climate change. People can sign up for their waste-to-art workshops run live on Zoom. Their Now+ initiative is a large-scale community art project that tackles waste, pollution and climate change. Bubble wrap, biscuit wrappers, pasta and salad packets are turned into beautiful art works.


‘It puts a value on something “valueless” – single-use plastics – and activates communities to change their consumption habits through the creation of art,’ says Aberline. ‘This is where powerful conversations around waste, consumption and environmental best practice can happen including recycling, circular economies and sustainable power.’


Are we changing our ways with plastic waste?

Rox De Luca says she has noticed shifts in awareness and policy since she began her mission to pick up plastic on our beaches. ‘More people are using keep cups and being more conscious of waste, and councils are stepping up too, sometimes.’ She’s also noticed more gloves and masks since these have become part of daily life in 2020.


Has Covid-19 changed things? ‘Governments are pushing back on commitments to ban single-use plastics,’ she says. She cites the South Australian and ACT governments’ backflips on banning single-use plastics due to Covid-19. ‘But we can and must try to keep up the fight. She quotes Marylouise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology, Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control at UNSW and adviser to the World Health Organization from the book Plastic Free: ‘We can do two things at once – take care of our health and reduce our impact on the environment. There is simply no excuse.’


Rox De Luca’s top 7 tips to keep plastic from our oceans and waterways

1.      Read, learn and listen to our important scientists and their research Understand what is really going on out there – be informed. Follow organisations such as 1 million Women, Greenpeace and Wilderness Society.


2.      Do what you can. Start small, think ahead. Anticipate what you need before you go out. Take with you what you need for a picnic or lunch at the beach, for example, take a shopping bag in your handbag.


3.      Think of our grandparents and great-grandparents and what they used when they didn’t have the abundance of plastics in their lives.


4.      Use a steel water bottle, use a keep cup, stainless steel straws, glass containers for food, Beeswax wraps instead of plastic, a bamboo toothbrush.


5.      Understand what is recyclable and how to recycle.


6.      Consider ways you can lobby your local council, state government and the federal government.


7.      Find out about local groups, or create your own! For example, Ocean Plastic Patrol in Austinmer was started by two parents from a local school who organise school kids to do beach clean-ups. Support organisations like Clean Up Australia, Plastic Free July, Take 3 for the Sea, Responsible Runners and Tangaroa Blue.


What to read next

Rox De Luca shares her favourite book about mitigating plastic waste: Plastic Free: The Inspiring Story of a Global Environmental Movement and Why It Matters by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz and Joanna Atherfold Finn (NewSouth).


‘The book is insightful and current and full of great information and interviews – with people like Jennifer Lavers [of Adrift Lab] and Air New Zealand, who went plastic free. Speaking with Rebecca made me realise it is an important and practical book for anyone committed to reducing plastic waste.’



Follow Rox De Luca on Instagram and visit her website.



Follow John Dahlsen on Instagram and visit his website.




Alison Hill writes features and web copy from the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

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