RA Summer Exhibition 2022
This year, the theme of the exhibition is Climate: whether as a crisis or opportunity, or simply our everyday experience, it is an all-embracing and urgent subject.
Nobody cares/short term need fulfilled
With this piece, I’m making a social commentary on our relationship to single use packaging and packaging serving convenience culture. When we purchase a packet of crisps or a bottle of water, do we fully realise what we’re purchasing? Along with the contents of the products, we take ownership of the packaging. There is an accepted norm, especially when away from the home to ‘get rid’ of the packaging at the earliest opportunity.
Nobody cares/short term need fulfilled is a photograph I took, of a discarded crisp packet and plastic bottle which somebody (not me) has proceeded to temporarily attach to the side of an electrical junction box (using a pre-existing metal loop on the box) situated near a busy road in London.
I’m not saying this is the only packaging to be ever discarded in this way, but once you scale up the thought process to every street, every city etc you realise the scale of the problem. Furthermore, behind the packaging there is an industry to fulfil that short term need and a way of thinking which is about the individual and what they crave, rather than more communal activities where reusable containers would be acquired.