Six pack plastic yoke
Specimen collected from Roche’s Point, Cove of Cork, Ireland
Copeopod Langisticus
Aureplia Auristice
Shoe sole
Specimen collected from Blackrock shoreline, Cove of Cork, Ireland
Albatross
This photograph shows 276 pieces of plastic found in the stomach of a 90 day old albatross chick from Midway Island, North Pacific Ocean in 2012.
Statistics show that plastics at sea have no boundaries.
100% of marine turtles, 59% whales, 36% of seals, and 40% of seabirds have eaten marine plastics.
Listen to Barker talk about this photograph here:
We Must Act Now
Plastic Smartie lids stopped being made over 14 years ago, when the packaging was replaced by a completely card version. However, the old plastic Smartie lids have continued to wash up on beaches around the UK and beyond.
The lids were originally embossed with a letter of the alphabet, and some featured faces, motifs, and limited edition colours for special events.
Barker says, ‘In one afternoon I collected almost the whole alphabet (except 5 letters) from Spurn Point, a nature reserve on the east coast of England. Some of the lids in the image are more than 40 years old.’
The artist arranged some of the lids to spell out the message ‘we must act now’, which became the title of the artwork.
Listen to Barker talk about this photograph here:
Image originally commissioned by WeTransfer as part of their WePresent series. Barker was selected to be part of WeTransfer’s Union of Concerned Photographers, an initiative which uses the power of photography to underline
the urgency of environmental concerns.
Penalty
The FIFA World Cup 2014 was the spark for this project. In the year leading up to the event, Mandy Barker put out an international call for footballs found in the sea and on shorelines.
In just 4 months, people sent her a total of 992 marine debris balls. These originated from 144 different beaches in 41 different countries and islands.
The recovered footballs are presented against a black background to resemble the deep ocean.
Barker says, ‘The series title has a double meaning. In football, a penalty is a punishment for breaking a rule. In relation to my project, a penalty is the price we will pay if we do not look after our oceans by managing the over-consumption of plastic and becoming responsible for its disposal.’
To hear Barker talk about this series of work listen here:
SOUP: RUINOUS REMEMBRANCE
Ingredients; plastic flowers, leaves, stems, and fishing line. Additives; bones, skulls, feathers, and fish.
SOUP: REFUSED
Ingredients; plastic oceanic debris affected by chewing and attempted ingestion by animals. Includes a toothpaste tube. Additives; teeth from goats.
WILDLIFE from the series HONG KONG SOUP: 1826
Ingredients: Plastic ice-lolly wrappers with syringes collected from single visits to three different beaches on Hong Kong Island.
SOUP: BURNT
Ingredients: all plastics partially burnt.
SOUP: BIRD’S NEST
Ingredients: discarded fishing line that has formed nest-like balls due to tidal oceanic movement. Additives: other debris collected in its path.
