Rising Tides: Art and Environment in Oceania is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland. While some of the artwork on display undoubtedly addresses the “climate crisis in Australia and the Pacific Islands,” there is also a major secondary theme: plastic. The blurb defines it as “showcasing artworks created in response to this.”
The focus of the exhibition is a massive, room-sized work created by German-Maori artist George Nuku. It’s called Bottled Ocean 2123 and it’s composed completely of waste plastic. A pair of venomous hammerhead sharks swim overhead, hunting down a school of fish with bodies composed of translucent blue plastic water drums; two jellyfish sway in the breeze created by a well-placed fan, their tentacles made of numerous transparent plastic water bottles intertwined.