Reflection

Reflection

I feel passionate about the way we treat plastic, using plastic bags and bottles for a matter of minutes before throwing them away, where it can take lifetimes to decompose. This throw away culture is having catastrophic effects on the environment, with eight million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year. This is not only polluting the waters, but harming the animals who call the sea their home. I wanted to create a piece that brought awareness to the facts of plastic pollution, to try and change peoples’ bad habits, opting for reusable environmentally friendly items, rather than throw away plastic ones. To get the important message across, I created a poster with hard hitting facts about the ocean. I based my poster design on a Vogue magazine cover, as I liked the juxtaposition of the elegant fonts and colours with the shocking statistics. Just like a Vogue magazine, I knew I wanted to include a model, so I came up with the idea of creating a headpiece of the ocean which she could wear. The head piece I made from mainly paper, which I folded, in order to create to the look of waves. I spray painted the pieces blue, before assembling the main structure together. To enhance the ocean look, I added coral like detail by making lots of tiny loops and sticking them together as well as adding cut out silhouettes of fish. I then covered the piece in various plastic items: bottle loos, ripped up bags, and plastic beads to show how the beauty of the ocean is being destroyed. I also cut out fish shapes from an orange bag, placed them between two sheets of plastic, and fused them together using an iron. This shows how fish are trapped in a world of plastic.