Photo: Ocean.org
Internationally-renowned author, artist, and designer Douglas Coupland is collaborating with Ocean Wise® to highlight an escalating global conservation crisis – ocean plastic pollution – through a new major sculpture exhibition that will be unveiled at Vancouver Aquarium on May 18, 2018. This is a first for both the artist and the organization. The year-long installation, titled Vortex, will immerse visitors in a contemplative, emotive, and transformative experience.
The exhibit brings together Coupland’s west coast upbringing, his well-known fascination with both mass culture and crowdsourced materials, and his ever-evolving relationship with plastics and human-made materials. A large part of his exhibit is a creative reimagining of what is commonly called “the Pacific Trash Vortex” – also referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – and will feature a colourful array of ocean plastics collected along the British Columbia coastline by Coupland, the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, and other collaborating cleanup organizations. The work will be thoughtfully curated and modified by the artist.
Coupland’s literary and visual art combined have earned him recognition the world over. Coupland is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Coupland’s first novel and international bestseller, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, was the precursor to an extraordinary library of published prose in many languages. During the past three years, Coupland has had solo museum shows in Vancouver, Toronto, Rotterdam and Munich, participated in many group shows, and was Google’s 2015 Artist in Residence at their Paris Google Cultural Centre.
Coupland’s exhibit will be hosted at Vancouver Aquarium as an immersive display of ocean plastic. Throughout the galleries of the Aquarium, visitors will also encounter interactive experiences that highlight the ways plastic has penetrated and impacted our oceans as well as forward-looking solutions that will help us create more sustainable oceans into the future.
