“My studio practice is a form of serious play,” multimedia artist Aurora Robson says. “It is a meditative exercise in subjugating negativity, driven partially by the fact that people continue to think of plastic as disposable when it is precisely the opposite.”
Robson, an artist primarily working with plastic debris found in our oceans and waterways, pushes us to be honest with ourselves about the adverse effects of human consumption and our attitude towards items considered “disposable.” Instead of leaving trash to pollute our earth with materials that will never decompose, Robson repurposes it in hopes that these one-use yet everlasting materials can serve an everlasting purpose as artwork.
Robson did not initially use found plastic in her work as commentary on human negligence of the environment, but rather as something ubiquitous, something everyone comes into contact with during their daily lives. When deconstructing plastic bottles and various other used household products, Robson claims there’s an intimate quality to working with used and discarded belongings of strangers, even if the owners no longer care about them. “I see plastic pollution as a problematic connective tissue giving all of humanity a shared challenge, despite being a massive problem for all life on earth, it also unifies us.”
When Robson learned of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a vortex of trash twice the size of Texas floating around in the Pacific—she was motivated to take action, to create awareness of our environmental impact. She says, “To me, the artist’s goal is to see things, and help others see things that we might not otherwise see.” With this goal in mind, Robson founded Project Vortex in 2008, an international artist collective devoted to repurposing waste as artwork.
During her residency at McColl Center in 2014, Robson developed the curriculum for Sculpture + Intercepting the Waste Stream around this goal. She brought this class to Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, where the students participated in a waterway clean-up. Robson described the unearthed trash as an “archaeology of human slovenliness,” which was then used to create art for an exhibition.
Born in Toronto, Robson was raised in Maui and then moved to New York. Though plastic has been her preferred medium since 2004, she began as a welder. After certification, she went on to Columbia University to earn a BA in Art History and Visual Arts. Robson now lives and works in the Hudson Valley, often collaborating with her husband, artist Marshall Coles.
Robson’s work has caused international ripples, inspiring artists from across the world to participate in Project Vortex and continue to explore plastic as a medium. Robson told the World Wildlife Foundation during her 2017 exhibition in their gallery, “Art is a global language, and pollution is a global issue, so merging the two to find potential solutions seems only natural.”
