Canadian novelist and designer Douglas Coupland is taking on the plastic pollution crisis in the worldB次元官网网址檚 oceans with a new exhibit coming to B.C.

Using plastic found along the provinceB次元官网网址檚 shorelines, Vortex will be on display at the Vancouver Aquarium, near the animals most affected by the pollution: whales, dolphins and seals.

The idea started four years ago during a return visit to Haida Gwaii, when Coupland came across debris that had washed up from the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

While walking along the shores he had been visiting for decades, he found the same plastic bottles he remembered buying in Tokyo 13 years before.

B次元官网网址淚 began working with plastic thinking it was eternal, shiny and happy,B次元官网网址� Coupland said.

B次元官网网址淔inding that plastic bottle on the beach was like being on the receiving end of an ancient curse warning me, B次元官网网址楤e careful what you find seductive. Be careful the things you desire.B次元官网网址� I knew I had to do something to change this. We can turn this around.B次元官网网址�

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Vortex includes several components surrounding a large, 50,000-litre water installation with a battered Japanese fishing boat that had been lost during the tsunami and found on Haida Gwaii.

Inside the boat sits a crew of four characters, including artist Andy Warhol and a woman in a life-jacket meant to represent an African migrant fleeing from her home country.

The idea is to represent the B次元官网网址渃omplex global webB次元官网网址� of oil, plastics, politics and power and how itB次元官网网址檚 changed through the decades, Coupland said in a release Tuesday, including B次元官网网址淧lastic Girl and Plastic BoyB次元官网网址� representing the future.

Inspired by the Great Canadian Shoreline CleanupB次元官网网址檚 annual B次元官网网址渄irty dozenB次元官网网址� list, based on each yearB次元官网网址檚 cleanup across the country, the exhibit also features a gallery wall show a collection of the most common marine debris found on shorelines.

Coupland said he hopes the piece can foster change and bring understanding to the global scope of plastic pollution in oceans.

B次元官网网址淚B次元官网网址檓 just old enough to remember when people littered. But almost overnight, littering stopped. ItB次元官网网址檚 a hard thing to believe, but it happened because millions of forces around the world coalesced,B次元官网网址� Coupland said.

B次元官网网址淚f I can be part of this process with marine plastics, then great. Environmental art is not what I thought IB次元官网网址檇 be doing with my life at the age of 56, but I think a lifetime spent beside the Pacific inevitably had to assert its presence from my subconscious out into the conscious world.B次元官网网址�

Vortex opens at the Vancouver Aquarium on May 18.

ashley.wadhwani@bpdigital.ca
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