up collective has made its debut with two installation pieces at this year’s high tide festival in support of plastic bag free torquay.
rachel burke’s ‘bloom’ and stacie bobele’s ‘destination: water’ are both critical responses to the threat of plastic litter in the marine environment with the sole aim of making people think about their choices at the supermarket.
her involvement with up collective was “interesting timing” after a visit to the matine discovery centre with her young son. “we’d learned how damaging plastic bags can be once they are floating about in the ocean;” she said. “especially when they look a lot like jellyfish, animals like turtles eat them by mistake and suffer slow, painful deaths.”
this horrible thought had stuck in her mind and provided the motivation and inspiration for ‘bloom‘, an outdoor installation located at cosy corner that brings together solar lights, recycled plastic shopping bags and lampshade frames to resemble jellyfish. “i really want people to understand how easy it is for plastic bags to get caught up in our ecosystem and do real damage, particularly in seaside towns like torquay”.
destination: water has been created with the marketing strategies of the bottled water in mind, but with a twist. the focus is not on the water’s origins, but on the bottle’s destination. “bottled water in the first world is a perfect metaphor for the carelessly destructive lifestyles the media and advertising have convinced us are the key to beauty and happiness.” says the work’s creator, stacie bobele “the marketing of bottled water has to be the jewel in the crown of advertising. They’ve managed to sell the same product that comes from the tap at roughly 250 to 300 times the cost. all wrapped in a nice plastic container that will not break down, but will instead break up into smaller pieces of chemical waste.”
high tide is on in various locations throughout torquay between 2 and 4 december.
a few months ago we elected a new committee, got a new logo and have big things planned!
