‘Plastic Ocean’ by Thirza Schaap.

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‘Home.’

‘Bunny.’

‘Frozen’

‘Princess.’

‘Fruit.’

‘Spring.’

Dutch artist Thirza Schaap has an altruistic purpose behind her fragile and beautiful art pieces. She wants to draw attention to the pollution in the world’s oceans. More specifically, she wants to draw attention to the phenomenal levels of plastic we dump into them.

Schaap collects the random plastic pieces, toothbrushes, straws, flip-flops, bottles, any object really that washes up on the beach. Her childhood habit of collecting seashells and stones continued into adulthood. But this time she found herself filling her pockets with man made objects instead of natural ones. Initially, she started by picking up the debris and photographing it, but the idea soon expanded.

“‘Plastic Ocean’ is an art project, which I started to create awareness around pollution to try and prevent (or at least reduce) plastic pollution,” said Schaap.

‘Prom.’

‘Flirt.’

‘Shattered.’

‘Holes.’

‘Sale.’

‘Best Before.’

Now she takes the rubbish home to dry and sorts all the pieces. Then she ‘plays’ with the abandoned items taking each piece and laying it out, making a collage of sorts, pretty debris made into still life arrangements. She photographs the finished artwork on pastel sheets of paper or sand and shoots them in bright, natural daylight.

“In making artistic sculptures out of the objects I find, I try to evoke an emotional response from my audience by creating a contradiction. A clash between initial aesthetic attraction and after a second look: repulsion and the realisation of the tragedy trash causes,” she said.

There’s no doubt Schaap’s artworks are interesting and pretty, although some might argue they are a long way from being adequately alarming or insightful. Whiles she certainly hasn’t set out to glamourise all the plastic waste in our oceans, it would be easy to wrongly fall for her pretty pictures, glossing over the potential ecological disaster of the rubbish that we carelessly leave behind.

[Images courtesy of Thirza Schaap.]

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http://www.yellowtrace.com.au/thirza-schaap-plastic-ocean/

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