Martin Waters Coastal Art Exhibition

At Hull Aquarium the first thing I saw, before any wildlife, was an exhibition by Martin Waters. Assembled from found objects on the beach, his works aim to highlight the huge volumes of waste littering our coastlines.

         

These bottle pieces resemble the jellyfish found inside the aquarium itself, both in their transparency and their colour, and the subtle differences between each one make this collection more interesting and the link to the exhibition venue meant that he had a captive, interested audience to view his work. 

The gradual blending of colour (ombre effect) works really well because the main colours are of the same tone, but you can still see the variety of, for example, yellows within that  main band.

Beautifully arranged by shape and colour, the 3D nature of the works was highly appropriate for the setting. Simply mounted in rectangular, brown frames with cream backgrounds and sequentially ordered so that the colours of one work blend into the next, these discarded pieces of rubbish have been given a new purpose and are beautiful representations of society's failings.

The linear arrangements of these objects give a real sense of movement, helped by the contrasting colours used and the repetition of many lines next to each other. It reminds me of the colour stripes I made for the print project, that were visually appealing but not useful at the time. It might be interesting to get other people to collectively form a colour stripe, where each person adds a single stripe, and 175 stripes later the piece would be finished.

It also reminds me of the appearance of gel electrophoresis, a process I came across at school that is used to separate protein based molecules, for example DNA. A series of lines appear in the gel as the electric current is applied, showing the distribution of protein according to size and charge. 

This linear effect only works here because the objects are of the same type; similar or identical shapes force the eye to focus on colour and direction. This is definitely something to consider when constructing my own work.