Art-Earth
Plastic and nature come together in the form of a plastiglomerate, a geologically recognised plastic/sand conglomerate. Plastiglomerates are formed from bonfire activity on beaches when molten plastic combines with sand and sediment hardening to create an object that is part-nature and part-garbage. In the plastiglomerate, human garbage becomes a part of nature and is brought into the historical process of rock formation and erosion since these plastiglomerates will eventually erode into the sand they are partially made from. The plastiglomerate visually demonstrates the permanence of the disposable, Heather Davis states that unlike rocks, plastic is without history but when physically bonded with sand (a material formed by the long natural process of erosion) this distinction is muddied. The plastiglomerate also has a hybrid categorisation as both a geological specimen and an artwork. Plastiglomerates have been displayed as readymade sculptures in art galleries, here what was once plastic human garbage is revalued as art finding itself in the value-affirming institution of precious objects.
In a world where plastic mingles with rock and enters the gallery space, it is easy to imagine Richie Culver’s sculpture exiting the gallery and becoming a future reality where human waste is physically embedded in the geological past. Plastic and other materials are useful to humans only for a short period of their lifetime, the main audience of our waste becomes nature and what use is an old plastic Nokia to a rock?
The Yolungu artist Gunyubi Ganambarr transforms waste materials left behind after mining into art. Ganambarr’s work ‘Gapu’ (a Yolungu word for water) retools a discarded conveyor belt into an artistic material. This discarded waste object is made an aesthetic object incised with intricate Yolungu markings. Ganambarr is working from the land but what the land entails has expanded: as well as more traditional medium such as wood and bark, his works use chicken wire, steel, glass and roof insulation. The use of these innovative materials is entirely consistent with Yolungu cultural laws that state that the land itself should be involved in artistic practice. The acceptance of these introduced materials as permissible artistic mediums demonstrates how human waste materials have become an ordinary part of the natural landscape, this enmeshment creates a sense of the world as a plastiglomerate, a place where man-made waste and the natural meet and solidify.
References:
Davis, Heather. “Plastic: Accumulation without Metabolism.” Placing the Golden Spike: Landscapes of the Anthropocene. Eds. Dehlia Hannah and Sara Krajewski. Jank Editions. Portland, 2015. 66-73. Web. heathermdavis.com. 5 April. 2021.