Artist Steve McPherson tells us about his ongoing projects using discarded plastic waste found on Britain’s beaches…

“For 15 years or more I have been obsessively collecting objects from the beaches near my home on the north east Kent coast, UK. These pieces of marine litter are the forgotten and lost detritus and jetsam of day trippers and pleasure seekers, shipping and fishing industries, and unthinking bathroom discarders. The mainly plastic objects, wave worn and sun bleached are prominent in their manufacture against the natural colours and shapes of the coastal drift – and lie sometimes for years, condemned and condemning as a sign of wastefulness and the disregard of human consumption. Their wrecked existence is due to loss – misfortune – apathy – and malice, and their use is long since passed.

“These lost and found packagings and toys, souvenirs and trinkets, components and workings, are then collected and treasured for their form and colour, and for the potential they have to ‘become’ in my artwork. (please go here www.stevemcpherson.co.uk to see finished artworks).

“After hours of collecting, the objects are collated into categories; by colour, by size, by subject, sometimes chance welcomes other taxonomies and these are brought together to form works that combine the elements with a narrative text, which describes in kind a possible part history of the object.

“The beach where I collect from (which is in a Site of Special Scientific Interest), echoes in miniature the Pacific ocean; as its swirling currents trap and concentrate the debris left by Thanets 2.7 million beach visitors, its 127,000+ residents each year, and the shipping debris from the constant stream of boats and ships that move along the north Kent coast. I in an equally small way then glean and clean the beach to re-use and to turn what is ugly and un-wanted into something I feel is aesthetically interesting, desirable, sometimes humorous, and always questioning, hopefully giving through my intervention a new life to the discarded objects, and in a small way a chance of ecological persistence to an already fragile small part of coastline.

“Recently I have undertaken another project this time online. This website www.marineplastic.org acts as a global depository of images of beached marine plastic, and invites people form all over the world to take and send images of plastic they find on the beach to be stored and documented on the website for all to see and to create a greater awareness of the severity of plastic pollution. This project is in its infancy, to date I have images from the UK, Malta, Kuwait, and the USA, I am hoping for more from as far away and near too as possible. I have also recently donated work and worked with MCS UK, Surfers Against Sewage and Algaltia Marine Conservation Society.”