Series: Waterworld.
Title: Fountain of Pity
Yes plastics are everywhere in the environment. They are even considered to be a geological marker of the Anthropocene, or the Age of Humans: plastic is a new type of material that will be encapsulated in rocks all over the planet, for future geologists to study as a marker of the current geological time period, in which human activity has become the dominant influence on the environment.
The plastic contamination I found within the mangrove ecosystems I explored, I decided had to be added as another layer to the narrative. While I saw the organic living structures of the mangrove plants and roots to predominantly represent the ’tribes’ the inhabitants of Waterworld, I looked upon plastic debris as a way to suggest civic structures or entities.
I call this image, ‘The Fountain of Pity’. In a more pristine, revered world, a civic fountain is an object of beauty. It is a source of cool fresh invigorating drinking water. Not so in WaterWorld. Here the inhabitants gather around this civic disgrace, gurgling it’s insipid black toxic water. They mingle and socialize, say like Romans might do around the Trevi Fountains, while the WaterWorlders are accepting of it’s noxious presence. Plastic. What plastic? A bit like humans today stroll across plastic littered beaches and hardly notice the mess. Act almost as if it’s perfectly natural today to sit on garbage strewn sand.
The series can be seen here in it’s entirety
