Plastic is a part of our culture. We use it and we throw it away. And then it comes back. It is in the flow of the rivers, the swells of the ocean; it has been ingested into the food chain and released into the atmosphere. In many ways it has enhanced our lives and advanced our labours, but in the world’s hidden places plastic is accumulating.

Main Gallery: Andrew McNaughton – Steve McPherson – Jean Baynham – Angela McMahon – Jan Nowell – Lindsay Taylor –  Mary Flynn

Downstairs: Children’s Gallery

What creatures will be ‘Fit to Survive’ in a plastic-filled world?  This film by Curious was originally commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’.  It will play throughout the exhibition, and visitors asked to create their own gallery of ideas with the help of workshops run by professional doodler and award-winning filmmaker Roy Zoner.

In The Courtyard

Environmental arts organisation Ecotales and children from Stanley Primary School in Teddington bring Stanleytross the up-cycled albatross to ONCA. In order to highlight the plight of the albatross, who now have stomachs full of plastic, each child in Stanley school from reception to year six cut out one feather from a plastic milk bottle or black plastic container to create the sculpture. Its feet are made from plastic bags and its head was created by artist Michelle Reader using recycled plastic bottles and bottle tops.

Throughout the exhibition, we will hold Stanleytross children’s writing and poetry workshops with ONCA’s resident writer, Joanna Coleman. Some of the results will be published in a book compiled by Ecotales, with a foreword by David Attenborough.

Workshops and Performance

22nd March, 1:30 – 4pm:  Drop-in doodle workshop for all ages with Roy Zoner. Suggested donation of £5.

30th March, 2 – 4pm : Picturing Plastic – creative writing and illustration workshop with Joanna Coleman from ONCA and Louise Purnell from Ecotales.

Above image: INorganic Group Exhibition Private View

Above image (detail): Steve McPherson ‘Polymer’

Above image (detail): Steve McPherson ‘Sampler’

Above image: Mural by Jo Swannell (www.brightonmurals.co.uk)