Today, we live in a disposable society based on the excessive production of short-lived and disposable goods. The advent of plastics have fuelled this way of living. The Plastic Palace confronts this way of life, by inviting the public to step inside 20 tonnes of waste plastic, the typical amount of plastic waste consumed in one’s lifetime. Today this issue has reached crisis point. Plastic for all its damages is readily recyclable, but for years most of the world has relied on China and other South East Asian countries to take our excesses.
In 2018 China, the world’s largest recycler, overwhelmed by the invasion of waste, implemented the National sword policy, banning almost all plastic imports. This geopolitical move has forced many countries to confront their throwaway attitudes and look for solutions to these problems at home. Without a solution, short term plastics are being stockpiled in massive quantities in many countries who previously relied on exports, hidden away from consumer’s eyes at huge costs.
The Plastic Palace relocates these stockpiles to the centre of a regional Australian town, to force us to confront our impacts. The plastic has been crushed into giant bales or bricks, creating stratified layers of past goods. Made up predominantly of kids toys, outdoor furniture, car bumpers, crates and boxes, these bales provide an intimate insight into people’s once loved possessions.
The materials historicity, humanises what would otherwise be seen as offensive and highlighting that this is a resource not waste. From the outside the pavilion has been sheathed in a lightweight semi-transparent white geotextile skin, which from a distance, appears as a perfect iridescent jewel, but on approach its semi-transparent veil, softly reveals true nature of the plastic waste behind. As visitors come closer, once loved items come into focus and a small doorway is revealed.
Leading them into a grotto-like interior surrounded by compressed domestic detritus, which looms over the occupants of the pavilion. Looking up, the form tapers inward to a small aperture in the ceiling. As light streams through the opening and the clouds roll overhead, a bright yellow plastic smiley face looks down among the crushed objects.
It’s a smile that perhaps once brought joy to a child but now it looks down, as if to say, “You can’t get rid of me that easily!” Despite the overbearing weight of the plastic debris, the interior’s size provides an intimacy that encourages quiet reflection. Alongside the pavilion, Raffaello Rosselli Architects produced an exhibition, exploring the commercialisation of plastic waste in long-life products. Working with local manufacturers to produce recycled plastic that, like the stratified layers of the plastic pavilion, reveals its inherent history, while reducing cost of production. This was designed in the form of terrazzo like sheeting for construction industries and high-quality furniture.
