INTRODUCTION
This website focuses on photography, artwork and design relating to waste, either plastic found on coastlines or general waste in cities. A common theme is a concern about the co-dependent relationship between the depletion of the earth's resources and the production of increasing amounts of merchandise which inevitably becomes waste, in this fast world of throw-away culture. My work experiments in technical or playful ways, emphasizing the need to use waste in our production processes.
WHEN THE PROJECTS BEGAN
In 2000 I became interested in plastic litter in the ocean and made a few simple artworks. But it was in 2007 while living in Cape Town, South Africa, that I developed a website concept to not only highlight the amount of plastic on coastlines but also to create a platform for people to upload images of artistic creations made using beach plastic (www.plasticbeaches.com). (Unfortunately without adequate funnding the website was recently mothballed). Mobile phone cameras were new, (pre-Facebook or Instagram days), and for the first time it allowed for quick image making and sharing using the internet. The website became a portal to display this ocean plastic imagery with a wider community. A large database of imagery has been collected since 2007. I myself have taken thousands of images of plastic in situ in South Africa as well as other countries around the world. A selection of these are included in the link PLASTIC BEACHES (PB): photos, as well as a series of digital manipulated images I called “Still Life”.
DESIGN WORK
While plasticbeaches.com and its collaborative aim was the initial focus, with so much plastic collected individually from shorelines around South Africa, this was used as a resource for design projects. Those showcased here represent only some of the finished works. Many other projects … awaiting commission! More recent work has concentrated on general waste produced in cities. This later work has been done in Valencia, Spain, where I moved to in 2018 and where I am currently based.
The Plastic Beaches Light Wave (2014): I experimented using PET bottles and then plastic drums to make wind turbines that generated electricity. These were then used as a generator for a dynamic installation called the Light Wave. After a number of prototypes, a string of lights (each lamp aesthetically independent of one another) were installed into a chain. By creating momentum at one end - either manually by hand with a lever or using an old auto windscreen wiper motor - a ripple effect passes through the chain. The power to illuminate the row of (LED) lights as well as the windscreen-wiper motor is generated from the Vertical Access Wind Turbine (VAWT) made from a beach barrel. The effect at night is of an undulating wave of light (all metallic architecture is painted black to melt into the darkness).
The 1000 Lighters Project (2016): The aim was to collect 1000 discarded lighters on coastlines. This took several months and lots of excursions to different beaches. Each lighter was cleaned of sand, oil and dirt and then de-gassed (I considered capturing the gas but the right container couldn't be configured at the time). Then the lighters were disassembled into their component parts. Four independent but mutually related design pieces form part of the 1000 Lighters Project:
1.) 1000 Lighters Giant Lighter: scaled up 10 times and made from the bodies of over 700 lighters, the giant lighter is illuminated on the inside by a network of LED lamps. At night the giant lighter forms a large colourful light installation.
2.) 1000 Lighters Water Wheel: White plastic filament wicks (found inside the fuel cells of each lighter and consisting of a floating metal sheath to regulate the flow of gas) were inserted onto 3 concentric rings made from tubing normally used to house telephone cabling. Each ring required a hub and these were made using plastic bottle caps fused together with a heat gun. The hubs are floated on a central axle using fishing gut (also found on the beach). On turning the axle the concentric rings rotate, and as they do the movement of the metal sheaths up and down the filaments create a sound similar to that of water flowing down a gentle stream.
3.) 1000 Lighters Tapestry: Each lighter employs a metal wheel used to generate a spark, and a large number of these have been assembled onto a sheet of corrugated packaging paper. Often either corroded or coloured by salt water, and together with the coloured levers used as gas flow regulators on the lighters, a tapestry-like form has been created.
4.) 1000 Lighters Spiral: The plastic heads from each lighter (normally used as a framework to hold the metal components in place) were assembled into a large outward-expanding spiral - resembling a cosmic vortex.
The PET Bottle Hinged-Vertebra Project (2015): A mountain of PET bottles are produced and discarded as waste. The aim was to play around to see how they might be re-used in design. Although just a few pics are shown many different shapes and forms were experimented with. Firstly a range of Hinged-Vertebra Lamps were constructed. An elastic chord running through the vertical structure and fastened at each end provides enough tension in the structure to give it both flexibility and rigidity. Using the same principle, a second incantation was the circling of the structure into a wheel with unique properties - as well as rotating in a conventional way, the Hinged-Vertebra Wheel has a lateral movement allowing the wheel to move sideways without turning the wheel itself. These constructions are patent pending with a priority date set of mid-2015.
The Flatcat Animal series (2014): With so much beach plastic in the studio I always had something to tinker with. I wanted to make something fun that would appeal to kids. Easy for others to create and the simpler the better. I noticed by taking a flat piece of plastic and adding 4 plastic tubes on the underside you had created an animal. An animal with "soul but no body" and hence the Flatcat series arrived (the first looked very much like a cat!). Each animal has a different character with its own personality biography.
Other designs featured are: the CrabDog series of lights (based on the legend of the Crabdog; a range of other lights; various plastic doodles.
The BLACK RIVER DOCUMENTARY (properly entitled: Man at the End of Black River) series of photographs were taken between 2014 and 2016. The photos accompany a documentary about a man living under a motorway bridge over a polluted river where it meets the sea on the outskirts of Cape Town. The documentary draws a parallel between someone living on the margins of society (one could say discarded) and the trash he lives beside. It offers insights into the nature and workings of the pollution in the river. It also takes a wider view of society, depicting how greed lies at the root of the problem of pollution.
Beach Graveyards are photographs taken along remote stretches of beaches during various remote beach explorations. Unusual objects wash up due to the out-of-the-way nature of the environment.
Mauvais Jours: Trees is a photo series of non-indigenous trees (Pine and Bluegum) on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. The trees are controversial: some believe they provide shade on the mountain while others demand their removal for being 'alien' or 'invasive' species. Prints are framed in the same wood the 'alien' photographs depict.
The "Monocrops" series emphasize the limitations of modern industrial farming practice - with its reductionism and inherent lack of variability in the production of food. The photographs are symbolically 'monochromatic'.
Dirty Nights (Buenos Aires streets): When visiting Argentina in 2009 I was amazed to see how much litter was strewn across the city's streets. At the time there was an existing political squabble between the people who cleaned the streets and government - I think there was an ongoing strike by waste workers. I spent evenings photographing the trash which made for some interesting compositions.
The "Fotoderas" series was developed towards the end of 2016 on the island ofGran Canaria. Fotodera is a word I coined to describe a photographic genre. It directly relates to "Pintaderas" - instruments used by pre-hispanic cultures to create abstract geometric shapes that marked walls of houses and caves in various historic sites on the island. Using hundreds of photographs taken of everyday markings on the walls of modern day houses and towns around Gran Canaria, or incidental views of roof lines or paintwork, these are large, composite, abstract geometric shapes and patterns to mimic the pintadera process. The photos offer a pattern making tool - like a pintadera - to depict a modern-day Gran Canaria.
Packaging Re-arrangements: Consumer packaging re-arrangements: all references to product information has been cut away from the original packaging, this has been re-assembled in different assemblages. These are put into a diptych form with contrasting backgrounds. The series began in 2020 during Covid lockdowns in Valencia, Spain. This is a sample of over 40 different re-arrangements.
Land Art with Waste: Since moving to Valencia, Spain in 2018 and exploring the countryside close to the city, it was apparent the amount of waste materials which had been dumped into vacant land. It was amazing to realise how much we throw away in contemporary society - whether old furniture, building materials or electrical equipment. So much material was going to waste in fact, that I thought we should be highlighting this somehow, or trying to use these materials for other purposes. Our problem of material culture is a very deep one: we produce things in order to remain in relation to one another through the exchange of goods. It is our valuing system. And yet this has been so over-accentuated in the industrialised world, that we hue at an ever-increasing rate more and more from the environment all our materials, all of which in fact other creatures rely on for their own survival. But what is perverse, is the increasing rate that we abandon these materials back into the environment in their exchanged forms.
Further links:
www.wastelandart.com
https://anguswhitty.wordpress.com/ (this blog details the chronology, thinking and workshops behind the plasticbeaches project)
www.thumbthing.com
Exhibitions and talks relating to Plastic Beaches:
Solo exhibition of photographs of plasticbeaches sculptures at These Four Walls gallery, Cape Town, 2008
Workshops given to schools in Khayalitsha, South Africa, showing how to make windturbines from plastic bottles. 2008. (
Talk given to Stellenbosch University Photography and Design dept, South Africa, about the Plastic Beaches project. 2012
Group show: "Recyclo", Brighton, 2014
Talk given by Donal MacFarlane about my recycling projects at Buddhist Centre, Valencia 2022.
Angus has a background in anthropology, invention & design, journalism, photography and documentary film making.