Plastic pixel art at Shrewsbury supermarket
We may be more inclined to put them in the recycling box than in the bin these days, but most of us still think little about what happens to all those plastic bottle tops after we thrown them away.
By the looks of it, a fair few have ended up as part of a wide-ranging art project currently being shown off in a Shrewsbury shopping centre, especially for the Easter holidays.
Make-shift board games, a 'stack the smoothie caps' competition and a bottle-top 'splash pit' to wade into are some of the things to have a go at as part of the Plastic Pixel Art installation, now on in the Riverside shopping arcade.
The exhibition is part of the ongoing work of Shrewsbury-based artist Sara Mai, who has been working with bottle tops for more than a decade, and it fills up a large swathe of the Participate Community Artspace, a former supermarket in the Riverside that has been converted into a gallery and workshop for local artists.
Sara is still the process of shifting through thousands of plastic bottle tops of all shapes, sizes and most importantly colours, from milk bottle to tops to fizzy pop caps, donated from various sources, not least from the waste transfer plant in Battlefield.
Sifting is happening at the exhibition, with 40mm tops sorted into seven colours, for use in decorative works and younger children's art, while 30mm tops are sorted in 36 colours for more complex "painting" works.
Pointing to rows of sorting trays, Sara said: "Those six blue trays can then be sorted into 60 different shades. The idea is to get a 'palette' ready for 'painting' with later this year."
The tops are used as "pixels" to build up pictures, mosaic-style, and Sara is hoping to tackle large-scale works during the Shrewsbury Open Studios season in June, and at the Meres and Mosses 'Merefest' festival in September, where she plans to create a floating landscape painting, depicting a panorama of the Mosses landscape.
But the focus is just as much on having a go and having fun, with members of the public encouraged to try making their own art or attempting to replicate painted pieces with the tops.
She said: “The 'have a go' plastic pixel art has been offered on tables, on floors, on fields and on pavements and provides opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to create art together. I provide a rainbow of colours and people get arty, happiness all round.”
There is also a competition to see how high Innocent smoothie caps can be stacked, with 61 – almost the height of an adult person – the current number to beat. At one end of the room there is also a seating area for children with a large bag of clean tops for to play with.
"I did that one for the children and the adults said they wanted one as well," said Sara, pointing to a huge bag full, with steps into it, that visitors are encouraged to wade into.
"It means you can experience what it's like to be a fish swimming through a sea of plastic."
The project, of course, has an ecological message, she said.
"It is to raise awareness of plastics getting into the water – and also to make sure this plastic doesn't get into the water by re-purposing it as an art material," she said.
Part of the exhibition also involves detailed interpretation boards tracing the history of plastic production and how to tell the difference between types of plastic, with six types, plus one other category for "other" identified by recyclers.
Plastic Pixel Art has supported a number of charity events in Shrewsbury as well attending festivals further afield. The exhibition is open Tuesday to Saturday until April 22.
