Plastic Vanitas

Plastic Vanitas is a new series of photographic works by Mariele Neudecker, developed as result of a residency at the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) and the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB). Neudecker re-presents the plastic collection with 49 vanitas still-lifes images. 

Intrigued by the seemingly random storage of MoDiP’s collection, boxed by material, weight and size, Neudecker has created a new context for objects that appear to bear no real intellectual relationship to one another beyond the physical. Using the powerful genre of still-life vanitas, Neudecker re-stages each plastic object, creating new relationships and depths of meaning. Vanitas painting is a specific genre of still-life painting in which the most exquisite accoutrements of everyday life are presented as symbols of the worthlessness of earthly achievement and the inevitability of death. A tradition that flourished in the Netherlands and Flanders in the 16th and 17th century, Neudecker develops her version of the Vanitas genre to symbolize the modern-day questions of impact, consumerism, waste and sustainability.

Plastic plays a significant role in each of our day-to-day lives and contributes to our comfort, functionality and, ultimately, to our impact, degradation and mortality. Plastic Vanitas illuminates the many faces of plastic, revealing the narratives of its past and probing the question of its future.

Supported by the Arts Council England, this is a collaborative project between TheGallery and MoDiP and a text + worktouring exhibition and is curated by Susan Lambert. The exhibition will go to Poole Lighthouse Gallery as the last venue of the UK tour and be shown at Gallery Thomas Rehbein, Cologne in June and at the Institute for Science and Technology HTW, Berlin later this year.