The Toxic Reef exhibition

Written by Ruth Carruthers at 12:42 on June 24, 2009 Comments (4)

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Institute For Figuring launch new coral reef exhibition.

The Toxic Reef exhibition features crocheted coral reef organisms made from plastic bags and other plastic waste, and is currently showing at the Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles. It follows on from their Crochet Coral Reef exhibition that toured the world last year.

The aim is to make people aware of the huge amount of plastic we chuck out every day, much of which ends up littering our oceans and killing wildlife.

Says the IFF: "By highlighting plastic waste and recycling it into an ‘art work', we hope to focus attention on the tsunami of plastic that is engulfing our oceans and strangling marine life. What we hope to create here is not just an aesthetic experience but a transformation in behaviour. Beginning with our own."

If you want to see how bad it has got, take a look at Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a region near Hawaii now so dense with plastic waste that it's often referred to as a ‘plastic island'.

The USA discards 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes, and that's just the start! Each year, the USA alone uses 380 billion plastic bags, but less than 5% of these are recycled. Sadly, the story is the same world over.

Here's my contribution to The Toxic Reef; a Caribbean reef squid, crocheted out of two Sainsbury's bags on the IFF's request. Orange plastic is difficult to get hold of in the US, supposedly. The squid idea was mine though!