Steve McPherson

Flow | 2022

Unaltered marine plastic objects found on the UK coast

Since 2007 Steve McPhersons primary source materials have been the discarded plastic objects that wash ashore on his local Kent coast of the UK. While it is impossible to ignore the environmental concerns present in his work, he draws analogies with his practice akin to the role of archaeologist/collector/and paradoxical treasure hunter. It is the alchemical processing of these remnants that he explores within a multidisciplinary practice. Via experimental tests of recycling and re-purposing, he seeks to plunder personal and collective narratives and bring them back to the surface of memory for new consideration.

Steve McPherson is an internationally exhibited artist whose practice includes, assemblage, collections, sculptural objects, installation, book works, photography, and sound. These are undertaken in aesthetics born from utility, science, the laboratory and museum. Reflecting his interest in the way that the mundane can move through a transformative state into meaning.

“…. Not only do the works highlight the problem of the amount of debris in the sea…. the mysterious, the unusual, the forgotten and lost. But these wreckage pieces these objects symbolise the history of the world up to this point, they are contemporary and future archaeology. They both explain and are unexplained at the same time. Each remnant acts as a conduit between potential, real and imaginary worlds, where personal and cultural memory reside. These are the objects of our lives, this is the material of the technologically advanced.” Steve McPherson