HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Roz Keep
‘Red Coral Grouper’ Acrylic on Polystyrene, 15×25 ins.
“I have been living in Hong Kong on the very small island of Lamma which has a population of approx 6,000 and where there are no cars. Life is quiet and gentle but we live with a giant coal powerstation, which supplies us and the whole of Hong Kong island with our electricity and, depending on the seasons and currents, our oceans and beaches are awash with other people’s trash.
One of the projects that I have been involved with locally is a small green group dedicated to cleaning up one beach in particular, which is opposite the HK Island fishing harbour known as Aberdeen or Little Hong Kong and where the use of polystyrene transport boxes is widely used on fishing boats. With its lightweight and good insulation properties, polystyrene has become the material of choice within the fishing and fruit and veg transportation industries and this has created a massive environmental disaster for HK because for some reason this white ‘HK Snow’ as we call it, is all over the coastline, breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces and poisoning the wildlife.
One day, I was out painting landscapes in watercolours and the idea came to me to use the inside of the polystyrene box lid as a painting canvas to make a comment about the disaster that it presents to the natural world. I started with beach scenes and at first included the boxes in the pictures to make it a bitter sweet experience for the viewer and gradually have decided to just paint beauty without the beast as the beast as it were is already present being the actual painting. People view the paintings first then understand the issue when they then recognize the polystyrene box lid that it is painted on.
‘The Art Of Awareness Project’ was born and has now been featured at several green events and festivals, has toured several schools and galleries and is being added to regularly as I continue to paint in acrylics upon the white trash that is disfiguring the entire HK and China coastlines. The question is, will the fishing industry clean up their act or will the Govt legislate against using this material in the ocean environment? We shall keep up the pressure and in the mean time, there’s tons of free canvas out there for my work to continue.”