Gareth Dunster on Ocean Art Walk 2015 at Stanley Plaza

Next up in our Ocean Art Walk 2015 at Stanley Plaza series , we have our fantastic visual artist Gareth Dunster!

Gareth, tell us about your piece!
I wanted to make something which was quite pictorial and representative of something which is indigenous to Hong Kong, to make the message more relevant to the local community. The black faced spoonbill, as a rare and endangered species is my choice for this. The whole issue is generally very relevant to Hong Kong as we are are geographically and historically so closely tied to the sea.

Birds are particularly beautiful ,fragile and perfect creatures. Recreating them with rubbish is a nice contrast.

To me, Ocean Art Walk is about...
The problem of oceanic pollution, particularly plastic waste has become a very hot topic. I live on Lamma Island and we experience very high levels of man made waste washing up on our beaches. It has to be seen to be believed. This is an opportunity to highlight this important problem and hopefully change people's habits before it's too late!

Wow, you used a lot of trash to make this piece of art!
The majority of rubbish we have found washed up locally is plastic and single use. Bottle caps, drinking straws, cotton buds, plastic bottles, etc. The idea that we would produce objects with no regard to what happens to them after that single use will be seen as highly irresponsible in the future. Obviously the message is that we should hugely reduce the amount of plastic we use,  that it should not be used for "disposable" products and that we should push for a system to reuse these materials when their lifespan is over.

How can we help our environment? 
As consumers we need to tell businesses that we want to minimize packaging, single use items and non-recyclable products and encourage those that promote more sustainable and responsible behavior. We communicate this through our own decisions and purchasing choices and by informing businesses about the reasons for our choices. Restaurants, for example, give out plastic cutlery because its cheaper to buy it and throw it away than to wash up real utensils. If we support this by eating at these places we are contributing to the problem. 

The greatest challenge was...
The materials we're trying to use (beach junk) are generally fairly unpleasant and aesthetically not that nice. We want the artwork to be attractive and interesting but getting the message across demands that it doesn't lose the unpleasant nature of the materials. Finding this balance is the hardest challenge.