Pottering in the Garden
Payer Pocket Gardens, Folkestone - September 2024
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A ripple of approximately eight thousand compact discs were laid out over Payer Pocket Gardens as my contribution to the launch of OA24. The discs seemingly all the same, each reflected a unique fracture of it's surroundings as it bounced back light from different angles, reflecting it's location and it's overhead canopy. Never still the colours flickered and changed to the conditions of the light, time of day and weather conditions. Located in a private garden tucked behind the Old High Street, the work hinted and invited visitors to draw closer and once within the garden the full impact of the display echoed the movement of running water as it descended down the terraced flower beds.
The discs were sown onto abanded garden nets. Now as redundant waste, these consumer products, highlighted in a fascinating and beautiful display the pervasive concentration of non-biodegradable plastics discarded by a society constantly enticed to purchase new products, in the name of progress. These wonders of technology, illustrate the investment of billions around the turn of the millennium, which now, although obsolete, marks another line in the sedimentary geology that humans are leaving as part of the Anthropocene epoch. The irony is that these inventions in the name of progress were never designed with a further use. They are non-recyclable, they cannot be adapted, fused, melted or moulded for a further purpose. It is estimated that 40 million tons of discs goes into landfill per year in the UK. And the product will take trillions of years to break down into small enough particles to be reabsorbed into the eco-system. Yet now international corporations are producing a super compact disc that can hold the equivalent of your external hard-drive. Again without consideration or accountability for its circular use. Without international legislation, our environment and society will again be left with slag heaps of unresolved plastic waste. |
