Louis "Masai" Michel - The Message

For the past three years, artist Louis "Masai" Michel has been living on the south-eastern coastline of Margate, England. His proximity to the coast has informed the environmentally conscious artist's practice, resulting in a new body of work exploring our relationship with plastic items that often end up as trash in the sea.

The exhibition incorporates several distinct series' of artwork including a group of paintings of marine species that have been directly affected by ocean plastics, several text-based artworks bringing attention to specific types of plastics that often make their way into sea, and cyanotype prints of beach-found seaweed that have been hand embellished with paintings of fishing net.

Over the past three years, Michel has been collecting refuse from the beaches of Margate, saving the plastic items and melting them into letterform moulds in order to create his text-based artworks. These still recognizable trash items forming these works, hammer home the urgency of the artist's message.

The artist states "These plastics only arrive in the ocean because of humans and the only way to stop it from continuing and to remove the plastics is for humans to step up. The Message, a play on the famed 'message in a bottle', highlights some of the major plastic villains. From fishing nets to plastic toothbrushes and bottles. Two paintings of shark species (Thresher and Dogfish) stuck in plastic bottles, reinforce the origins of the shoe title..."

The Message features multiple installation elements including an interactive piece where viewers are encouraged to reflect upon their relationship with plastic and to write an affirmation as a reminder to reduce their plastic use; and place it inside one of many recycled plastic bottles hanging within the gallery.