Our Plastic Ocean, by international award-winning photographer Mandy Barker, addressing the current global crisis of marine plastic pollution, will be the first online show opened by Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.
The show will be on display as part of the new Ocean Blues website launched by the museum dedicated to exploring the environmental threats to our oceans, the importance of research into our seas and some of the Sussex environmental heroes and organisations dedicated to supporting them.
Photographer Mandy Barker collects debris from shorelines across the world and transforms them into powerful and captivating images. At first glance, her images are reminiscent of sea creatures and corals suspended in a dark void beneath the sea, but closer inspection reveals a more disturbing reality.
From footballs to fishing nets, cotton-buds to coffee-cup lids, Barker highlights the incongruous plastic items now ubiquitous in our seas. Currently, eight million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year and if these trends continue, our oceans could contain more plastic than fish by 2050.
Our Plastic Ocean spans a decade of Barker’s work including the series Soup, meticulously detailed composite images of discarded plastic objects; Albatross revealing 276 pieces of plastic found inside the stomach of a 90 day old albatross chick; and Beyond Drifting, which sees Barker trace the footsteps of nineteenth century botanist John Vaughan Thompson who collected plankton specimens, the ocean’s most basic life-form.
To view the exhibition click here.