Jo Atherton – Artist

Scouring the Norfolk coastline for flotsam, Joanna collects fishing line, netting and other unexpected items for her colourful tapestries.

I collect marine debris from the North Norfolk Coastline to include in my artwork. I am clearing the beach of material and reinventing it into colourful art objects as a means of challenging people to think about the impact of plastics in our oceans.

Scouring the Norfolk coastline for flotsam, Joanna collects fishing line, netting and other unexpected items for her colourful tapestries.Initially the weavings are striking, but on realising they are comprised completely from marine debris, their existence becomes all the more alarming.

Marine detritus is symptomatic of a growing problem and worryingly, Greenpeace reports that the quantity of small plastic fragments floating in the Pacific Ocean has increased 100 fold in just 40 years.Every tide brings with it a new collection of orphaned objects, disconnected from their origin and curated by the waves. We imagine every object’s untold story – who owned them and how did they arrive on a Norfolk beach? Like those chance meetings or unexpected events deposited on the shoreline of our memory, the sea, now a soup of forgotten fragments, presents the unexpected and ignored; a second chance to be reinvented and woven into new narratives.

Find her at
Flotsam Weaving website – www.flotsamweaving.com
Twitter – www.twitter.com/flotsamweaving
Facebook – www.facebook.com/weavingwithflotsam

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