Eloise Young

For this project I decided to explore mass production and consumerism. To begin the project, I watched the documentary ‘Drowning in Plastic’ which illustrated the severity of the plastic crisis around the world. Through further research I was shocked to find 40% of plastic goes straight to landfill and only 9% of plastic is actually recycled. This began my research into artist such as Dirk Vander Kooij and Charlotte Kidger who both use otherwise discarded plastic and turn it into useful objects such as furniture. I also found images when researching about the plastic crisis that show a lot of repetition. Whether that be in how to plastic is stored, or when it is in production.

The idea of repetition became a theme throughout the development of my work. As my project developed, I was influenced by the work of Paul Cocksedge which inspired me to look at ways to created organic textures and forms using various techniques to manipulate the plastic. I experimented using the vacuum former to created moulds of shapes such bottle caps, plastic tubing, and organic textures that I created by pressing rocks into clay. However, I became most interest with the off cuts of the plastic moulds which inspired me to explore ways to highlight and make use of plastic that was never intended for use. For the outcome I created a sculptural piece inspired by the work of Antoine Pevsner, slotting multiple of the off-cut pieces together which I had manipulated by bending at certain points to create a series on unique pieces that had all initially been the same shape. I then photographed using a range of angles to capture the interesting shadowing created when using flashlights.

My final image aims to highlight and inspire how we view unused and extra plastic from production that would usually go straight to waste as well as ways that plastic we would think to have discarded straight away, can be celebrated.