How to choke a planet
An ecoartist distils the rubbish of five Thai beaches into ‘Blue Ocean’, a condemnation of shameful waste
A lot of that plastic junk carelessly tossed into Thai canals and rivers ends up in the sea, mingling with clumps of fishing nets, shards of Styrofoam and other flotsam to strangle marine creatures and basically shorten the planet’s life. Prasopsuk “Khru Pom” Lerdviriyapiti turns it into art – and it’s not supposed to be beautiful.
The eco-artist’s remarkable “Blue Ocean”, an “aquarium” full of recovered sea debris, is part of the “Greenpeace: Heart for the Ocean” exhibition opening tomorrow at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. The show continues through Sunday.
“All that junk in the ocean represents human irresponsibility towards nature,” says Prasopsuk, who’s been a prominent environmental artist since 1996 but calls the horrific 2004 tsunami disaster her “wakeup call”.
Quite apart from the devastating human toll, the catastrophe dumped vast amounts of sea-borne trash onto Phuket, where she’s lived for more than 20 years.
Born in Bangkok, Prasopsuk is using art to urge Thais to be more conscientious about littering. A pop bottle or coffee cup casually discarded in Bangkok or Chiang Mai has every chance of making its way downstream and ending up as ocean debris, adding to the extensive cumulative damage being done to the environment.
Topping 3.5 metres in height, “Blue Ocean” towers over viewers, as if confronting them with the immensity of the man-made assault on nature.
Bang Saen Beach in Chonburi yielded a mountain of rubbish during a sweep last August. Roengrit Kongmuang/Greenpeace
Joining members of Greenpeace Thailand on a beach clean-up tour, Prasopsuk spent two months collecting plastic waste for the project from Phuket households and five beaches – Karon on Phuket, Mai Khao-Yang Nai in Pang-Ngna, Bang Saen and Koh Srichang in Chonburi and Khao Chang in Trat.
Greenpeace Oceans campaigner Anchalee Pipattanawattanakul says the group collected 22 hefty garbage bags of waste on Bang Saen Beach alone.
“Most of the trash we found was rubber bands, plastic bags and bottles, Styrofoam, rope and cigarette butts. On Mai Khao and Karon we mostly found cigarette lighters, sandals, glass bottles, plastic bottle caps and fishnet. We also collected a lot of food packaging, straw and plastic cups.”
The trash picked up on the beaches filled four pickup trucks, and household garbage packed another two pickups.
“We hope our art installation, photo exhibition and activities will tell the story of how our plastic consumption has an impact on the sea, and inspires people to change their habits by reducing one-time-use plastics,” Anchalee says.
On every visit to a beach, Prasopsuk led a workshop for students, showing them how to covert sea debris into art.
“Blue Ocean” comprises three parts. Torn fishnet, pieces of rope and foam used to protect boats in dock form the backdrop for thousands of hanging plastic bottles stuffed with plastic bags. “Swimming” among these are transparent sculpted fish whose stomachs contain more plastic. Recycled waste is shaped into “coral” and even a shark nearly three metres long.
“This is the ocean, home to so much biodiversity, from fish to corals, now threatened by plastic garbage,” says Prasopsuk.
It’s choking the seas and shorelines and menacing human life inland, and all that garbage is the result of mindless littering. The plastic drifts on currents, is eaten by unsuspecting marine creatures that will soon after die, and drowns those that become entangled.
It’s disrupting the whole marine ecosystem, the artist points out. She wants her work to be a reminder that carelessness endangers us all, and a spur to action to stop this madness. Cutting down on our use of plastic is an obvious place to start.
Prasopsuk has been creating environmental art since 1996. Photo/Greenpeace Thailand
“I’ve been creating art from junk for over two decades, hoping to turn trash into something of value and raise awareness about the environment,” Prasopsuk says.
“As long as people keep tossing their empty bags and bottles aside without thinking, a lot more junk will cover the beaches. We should start using less plastic and recycle whatever we can in creative ways. Everyone should be helping to save our environment.”
Prasopsuk had an impact earlier with a solo show called “Eco Sculpture” at Phuket’s Loft Gallery in 1997, in which driftwood, fishing nets and wreckage from boats became sculpture. Viewers marvelled at the wondrous texture in cast-off wood, exposed by the steady rubbing of currents, sand and wind. It was a vivid link between humans and the sea.
Following the 2004 tsunami Prasopsuk presented the mixed-media installation “The Remains of the Day”, which utilised debris rolled in from the sea. It was the first time she’d addressed the problem of ocean waste, and it received widespread foreign interest.
In 2008 she founded the Andaman Young Artist programme. She and several Phuket schoolteachers taught students how to make recycled paper and use it in environmental paintings, which were then exhibited to raise public awareness.
Prasopsuk is doubtless the only Thai woman artist who’s well known in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she lived and worked from 2009 to 2011. She knew little about recycling waste at the time, she says, but set about encouraging the practice by designing a trash handbag that was both fashionable and practical. It garnered a lot of media attention there.
On her return to Thailand, Prasopsuk wanted to show the world that Thais could do their share in protecting the environment in creative ways. In 2013 she hosted the exhibition “Less is More”, full of bags made from plastic waste and other everyday materials, all assembled without complicated tools or methods. She also ran workshops that drew people of more than 20 nationalities.
In 2015 she founded the Prasopsuk Gallery at Phuket Art Village, where other eco-artists can show their work. She’s hoping more people will become “eco-warriors” and take note of the message in the art that she and her colleagues are creating.
SHOW NATURE SOME HEART
- The installation “Blue Ocean” is part of the “Greenpeace: Heart for the Ocean” event opening tomorrow (Valentine’s Day) at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre. The event continues through February 19.
- On Wednesday at 2pm Prasopsuk will talk about her work in a “Break Free from Plastic” panel discuss with actress Thitinant “Noon” Sristhita, Anchalee Pipattanawattanakul of Greenpeace and Trash Hero Group leader Sakdadej Sudsawaeng.
-That will be followed by a fashion show of outfits crafted from recycled materials by young Internet sensation Ma Deaw.
- Find out more at www.Greenpeace.or.th.
