A plastic pond filling up a rectangular well with paper water-lilies floating, bubble wrapped salmon made from shoe boxes, cardboard trees springing up along columns and elevator shafts, with their leaves splayed out against walls and railings, all these are transforming The Montréal Eaton Center into an ecosystem using various by-products from the shopping center’s recycling bins.
Flowers around pond made of tin cans and paper cups. Metal supports from file folders become stems. Tall grass made from yellow plastic strapping of shipping pallets. Frogs born out of soft drink bottle and supported on transparent plastic hanger.
10, 14-metre high trees made with 465m2 (5,000ft2) of cardboard boxes. 50 branches made with 502m2 (5,400 ft2) of cardboard boxes. 800 leafs, each made with a recycled file folder.
2,112 bottles make up 24 smaller waves. 2,048 bottles make up 16 bigger waves. 1,920 bottles make up 12 breaking waves.
The artists behind this project are Roadsworth and Brian Armstrong (a.k.a ’2Youth’), both renowned in the urban artistic landscape of Montréal. Their installation is not an attempt to recreate nature in all its glory. On the contrary. It emphasizes the irrecoverable loss of a natural and original state.
Fish designed with water and soda bottles as well as clear plastic coat hangers. Bubble wrap serves as protective skin. Algae made from backing of double-sided tape used to assemble bottles in concentric circles.
54 salmons made with bleach containers, bubble wrap and plastic caps.
“There is also something comforting in this artificiality despite the loss that it represents. It confirms for us a suspicion that humans are somehow separate from nature and satisfies a desire to insulate ourselves from our environment, an evolutionary response perhaps to the threats that have always existed there. The orderly arrangement of bottles that make up the waterfalls and pond and the regular placement of trees along architectural lines satisfy a longing for order and the illusion that we are somehow above the messiness and chaos of the natural world, an artificial representation of nature preferable perhaps to the reality of it. “(via projekroom)
