The focus for my current artistic practice began in 1991 while still at college with an exploration of salt as the footprint left by water after evaporating. I was fascinated by the mineral's ability to grow and react to environmental conditions; its crucial role in generating and supporting life and yet also be a cause for death.
My investigation focused on one of the most alarming examples of desertification processes caused by human miss-manipulation of natural Water System. Described as "...one of the worst ever man-made environmental disasters", the almost total disappearance of the Aral Sea -the world's fourth-largest lakes in the 60s- was already alarming scientists in the early 1990s, and it became the inspiration for my degree show in 1992. Today, ninety per cent of its original area has become a toxic barren wasteland and has been renamed as the Aralkum Desert. The term 'Aral Sea Syndrome', is now synonymous with any human-induced desertification process. However, I did not anticipate that my research would expose a more sinister type of human footprint, one that is microscopically embedded within these specs of salt-crystal dust.
For the past twenty years, I have been surveying the banks of the Thames looking for all types of residues that reveal how human footprints manifest in water. My exploration began with the discovery of pieces of leather shoes, with some over 2000 years old. These ancient remains – literal footprints from the past - were found adjacent to their modern equivalents in the form of plastic residues. Furthermore, these later residues are creating an entirely new geological layer in the Anthropocene, and for the last twelve years have become the focus of my recent works. These discarded polymers exist at various spatial scales – from tiny microscopic particles of coloured dust, too much larger objects.
Although most of my present artworks are made from just this one type of human-generated footprint, to understand the issues that plastic will generate for the future, we need to cross-reference it against preceding human waste incarnations. My studio feels more like a museum's archive, filled with twenty years of collecting and cataloguing London's discarded waste making its way into the Thames: materials such as leather, wood, metal, glass, ceramics, stone, bones and of course plastics.
The river acts as a fluid barrel, churning the sediments of time while randomly depositing clues from the city's past, and present onto its shores. Collectively, these deposits are representative of the kind of footprints that society leaves as a reminder of its material culture. How they became altered by processes of entropy and turned into unique entities that convey and trigger poignant, but also serendipitous meanings, is all determined by the way our brains construe them. My artworks based on these residues are unlike other archaeological investigations of the past, in that they challenge how we conceptualise our present and envisage the future.
For the last ten years, I have concentrated on producing time-capsule-like artworks of inherent entropy, constructed as geometric entities of figurative volume. Intended as visual quantifications to the alarming amounts of discarded plastic that found in water, these pieces capture static views of the present but infer disturbing perspectives for the future. Still, in time, they may provide future generations with undisturbed frames of reference to the slow degradation of these polymers, and even, potential chemical windows into the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
I began using colour-separation as an illustration to the sedimentary strata that would identify our presence in the planet's future, but also, as a way to challenge our subconscious perception to the inherent value in our waste. While sorting and separating plastics, I began to gather dust from the studio's floor onto a sieve expecting to obtain a clear separation of plastic from the sand and soil mix. I was shocked to find the resulting filtered dust made of mixed colour plastic particles; hence, I began to research microplastics in water.
In 2014, after sharing my findings on micro-plastics at Gustav Metzger's 'Facing Extinction' conference, I was invited to join a group of 14 women in a scientific expedition across the Atlantic to collect samples of microplastics from the surface of the water. I was horrified to find that almost every sample taken during the twenty days that took to cross the ocean, contained microplastics visible through the onboard microscope.
On my return, I realised that to capture the public's attention regarding issues of plastic waste in water; I needed to make the problem relate personally to them, and I decided to focus on locally found plastic waste. I came up with THAMES PLASTIC AND THE EXPLORATION OF FUTURE DUST (2016), a multi-disciplinary project designed to foster collaborative interactions between art, science and the public. The idea was to provide academics, scientists, students and volunteers with opportunities for interaction and hands-on learning about the issues that London's discarded waste causes in our most immediate aquatic environment: the Thames.
By generating opportunities for public interaction at different stages in the creation of "FUTURE DUST", I provided the viewer with opportunities to experience, first hand, the unconscious change in perception that occurs while separating a pile of mixed rubbish into a colour separated stockpile of useful and recyclable material. The chronological span for plastic footprints in the river runs for just over a century, from early Bakelite of the late 19th century to present-day plastics. In the case of leather, ceramics, metal and wood, the timelines span back even further than the Roman occupation of Britain over 2000 years ago.
After concluding my work on FUTURE DUST, I began to work on a series of ensuing projects derived as further explorations to the concept of water as a carrier for messages and information. Together, these undertakings would lead to an in-depth study of water as an intrinsic medium vested with the ability to mould individuality, and capable of revealing, the residual testimonies to our collective memory. Despite water' inherent transparency, we seemed to be utterly ineffectual in detecting the echoes of our presence mirrored by its essence. I intend to explore the varying spatial scales for these refractions as explicit representations for an inferred water's memory.
Last year, I was invited to create PLASTICO A MAREAS as a double installation for the Hejduk Towers of the Museum Cidade Da Cultura De Galicia to commemorate the 2019 International Environment.
Day. Earlier on this year, I was again invited to take part in PLASTIC MATTER, a group show at the Atrium Gallery of Hertfordshire University's Arts Faculty. The university also commissioned me to conduct several talks and workshops with local groups for a NEW GEOGRAPHIES COMMISSION PROJECT (A three-year partnership programme between nine arts organisations in the East of England, and several Dutch partners). For these workshops, I planned to create opportunities to explore issues concerning the recycling of electronic waste, in order to generate a set of components for the construction of a site-specific installation for the Patrick Gibber Museum Gardens in Harrow. Unfortunately, all of these engagements have now been put on hold due to the pandemic.
Work history
3D ArtistMaria Arceo
London, United KingdomFreelance