My first beach-plastic piece I did over 20 years ago on a beach in Sardinia. Here I found  large amounts of  bigger and smaler pieces plastic debris and even lots of micro plastics and made some temporary beach insatllations with them. At first I thought this plastic beach garbage was a local problem.  Not much later I started with cleaning beaches from plastic debris closer to home ; the west coast of Sweden where the conditions weren’t any better.

For me it became a way of being able to deal with sentiments of grieve and frustration because of this global problem and turn it into something more manageable. Cleaning beaches has given me an extra goal on my excursions, a good thing to combine with experiencing nature and discovering new places. It is sometimes hard work and time consuming, but  satisfying.

A part of the plastic debris I find ends up in my studio. My main attention usually goes to ropes, cords and fishing nets . Rope is an interesting material and comes in all possible dimensions, lengths and colors, although mostly in green and orange. Sometimes old, faded and worn, sometimes relativly new and fresh.

After sorting and cleaning (including 60°C machine wash) a process of transformation starts in the studio, from the dirtiest trash into paintings and objects.

My rope works point out the problems of plastic pollution and environmental destruction by it’s material. But they also tell something else. Something about displacement and travelling, about longing away. About time and chance. I see the connection to some ethnographic works, like abstract handicraft from the Amazon or the Congo, something you might find in an ethnographic museum, soft and tactile like a textile.

I also think about what future societies would produce after a possible civilizational collapse. We know how long plastic can survive before it falls apart, so it will be there even long after we stopped producing new. Will  low tech societies  in the future  use our plastic garbage for making body dekoration or masks?