A Grain Of Plastic

A Grain of Plastic began about four years ago, when i started to do open water swimming in the North Sea. I would return home after a swim, rinse my swimming costume and boots and gloves and collect the sand when it had dried in my sink.
After a conversation in my shop Buy the Kilo, about plastic in the sea with one of my customers who is a marine biologist, I asked if she could have a look at my sand and see what it unveiled. As a researcher she spent her days looking through microscopes and she took a small pot of my collection of sand. The images below are the result of Cassie's search. The sand was multiplied by 40 times and the images look like the most beautiful jewels. These images are photographed with lights down from the top, up from the bottom and infrared lights. My work has always about producing beautiful pieces of work but on further and close up investigation the subject matter is quite hideous. Plastic is there, the blight of the land and sea, how ever small. In these images the grains are actually cell size and the quantity of plastic in my samples was very distressing. Being cell like, this plastic can penetrate your skin, which is the most horrendous thing about micro-scoping my samples. Beautiful images, hideous content and consequences.
These images have yet to be exhibited.