Bottled Ocean, Behind the Red Moon, Ghost Nets, Crude

 By Tom Nutting

Bottled Ocean

George Nuku

Bottled Ocean 2123, 2023

Recycled plastics

I walk through the wall of jellyfishes (tentacles

thousands of scissored bottles undulating in the

breeze through the gallery door) into 100 years’

time, when plastic saturates, becomes taonga.

I stare at anemones (green plastic bottle bottoms

cut unfurling like the sparkling cocktail fountains

I coveted as a child - because they were treasure,

not plastic). Above a shoal of shimmering fish (blue

bottles split, inverted, suspended), a resplendent waka (plastic)

paddles past to the beat of chanting (plastic speakers), rippled

with light (plastic spotlight) refracted through kōwhaiwhai 

cut into manta wings (blue plastic) above   (green) (blue)   

      (plastic)       (bottle)  )blu  e)(  plastic(  treasure((

   pla     stic   bot)tl  (e (b)lu     ((e  ()(   p)la   s t           ic

                       I follow the breeze through the gallery door (plastic

           already saturates the world, is already sacred).

                                      The chanting recedes (plastic so bright they must

            all have been new - not recycled?). I close my eyes (bottles

                                                 swim cutting past, bluely aggregating in thousands

                                                                                     of sparkling vessels).

Behind the Red Moon

El Anatsui

Behind the Red Moon, 2023

Metal liquor bottle tops, metal shards, wire

Act I: The Red Moon

Great

sail, bood red,

rise shimmering spirit:

LORD’S LORD’S LORD’S!

The ship is a hall where we pray to

industry; that moon-led veil turbines

endlessly across the Atlantic: sugar, spirit,

gold, blood. Gold-shored Africa, red-shored

America. And back again. Now as then. Skylight

flickers through scales and spotlights red, gold,

red, gold, gold. Turn back, come behind: yellow

of a thousand sunrises or scurvyed eyes below

deck, bottle-tops to the ceiling, all the way

to the moon and back to Africa, by way

of sugar, on the licking tongue of

Europe’s silver spoons.

A red liquor moon

rises up.

Act II: The World

                     Standing high on the bridge     I watch             restless forms figure

  out the purpose of all this                 movement                              between identity

 and experience          fragments of               copper wire          and light lulling         — a mobile

      floating           above your head —             as you appear     from the stairwell.

I migrate to you.    Your hand reaches out        pointing the way

up and back      to the sail     like it’s a celestial body        we used to navigate.        

 People look so small                 from here, I could cry             out       trying to collect this all together

in some new globe      of meaning.                        You break away      

from me,     translucent.          I stand, waiting          for us

to reform.

Act III: The Wall

Walk backwards through the crevice, Dark

Sailor, in the high mud wall.  Now Dark Sailor

RUM, Dark Sailor RUM, Dark — the drum

beat cannot last forever; the king will wake.

His great black wall hid in plain sight, so tall

it  Bitters, Bitters, Action Bitters, Action, Action,

Action  filled the sky with its treacly falls so

sweet the people forgot what they were

longing for. They only knew sugar splinters

in bloody hands, from which memory was

wrested,  REX, REXTON, REXTON, REX

TON, REX, REXTON  if momentarily; one

day, looking up from metallic rocks, a spray

of rainbow oiled across the wall — the people

 recalled  LORD’s, LORD’s, LORD’s, LORD’s,

LORD’s  something new. It comes down

in great waves of knowledge, molasses slicks

falling, and then suddenly, the sun, the red

moon, and the glittering yellow shore.

Ghost nets

Florence Gutchen

Nguzu Waru Kazi (My Little Turtle), 2020 

Plastic fishing nets

She wades out — the islander — bends down

into rising turquoise, feels amongst fingers

of shimmering seagrass for the tell-tale heart:

a hard knot of plastic. The islands gather

ghosts. They always have. Lying across so many

streams of life, they were nourished once, until

currents brought colonists and shipping lanes

washing away their sand, simmering the sea

until the reef became skeletal. The pallid coral

catches only ghost nets now. She gathers them

all in her basket — tangled green cords greedy

for knotting, invisible lines that will never break.

And yet, carefully tracing the threads, they open

a little, like bivalves, and she re-crafts her islands:

metres of sea sucked in, 1.5°C, and out pour pearl

shells, lobsters, a thousand finfish, and her little turtle.

Crude

Andrei Molodkin

Fuck You, 2023

Acrylic block filled with crude oil, pump compressor, and aluminium podium

                      it’s hard to look

                                         directly

                                     i follow instead the pipes

                                                                   coiled

                                                               intestines spilling raw

                                                   treacle tentacling

                                rubber tongue spitting

                                           coins on eyes

                                                               up here,

                                                     alum bright plinth

                                         i bring my ear

                                                       nearer

                                                   lulled by the brass thump

                                 air-pull of pump

                                                    pitching

                                                           mouthfuls from cola

                                                             sump

                                                  sweet suits

                                                           of twitching dark

                                               rhythms circulate

                                                         until

                                                   i open my heart

                                 to ENJOY THE COLLAPSE

                                                                 and FUCK YOU