Oh I do like to be…an exhibition by the environmental artist Diane Watson focuses on the myriad of plastic items washed up along our beaches. The exhibition explores the types of plastic pollution around the British coastline Diane visited ten different beaches around the coast took a mile-long walk and developed wallpapers made from the objects found at each different location. The aim to see if common object appear at different locations. Every beach had single use plastic bottle lids, eight of the 10 beaches had tampon applicators, 8 had fishing line 5 had gloves!

We are now producing nearly 300 million tonnes of plastic every year, half of which is for single use. Small objects that once belonged to children such as toys, spades, plastic sand moulds and discarded Lego bricks have only heightened the significance of raising awareness of environmental issues. The UK coastline is more than 7000 miles long, in just 10 miles 373 items were found. When we multiply these miles by the hundreds of thousands of miles worldwide, the extent of ocean plastic pollution becomes alarmingly evident.

Diane’s work challenges the viewer to inspect these objects in an unfamiliar context and re-evaluate their relationship with single use plastics. Look again and consider not just the manufacturing cost but the cost to the environment.

Glove photography by Phil Rodriguez