“As a child, I would walk over beaches and through fields and forests to collect beautiful shells, shimmering stones, feathers and funnily shaped branches,” Dutch artist Thirza Schaap says in a statement, describing her work.

“Much later, when spending more time on beaches all over the world, I found myself doing the same thing, only to discover that I started filling my pockets with trash instead of treasure. Plastic from the ocean. Colourful and beautiful in its own tragic way.”

‘Plastic Ocean’ is an ongoing art project to raise awareness of pollution while at the same time trying to reduce the use of plastic; so Thirza combs the beaches, collecting washed-up bottles, bags, bits of string, straws – the things that most of us prefer to walk quickly past. Drawing us in with her striking compositions, she invites us to reflect on the ugliness that we have let loose in the world.

“In making artistic sculptures out of the objects I find, I try to evoke an emotional response  from my audience by creating a contradiction. A clash between initial aesthetic attraction and after a second look: repulsion and the realisation of the tragedy trash causes.”