Trash Talk

Her “trashion” might make people laugh, but Marina DeBris wants her artworks – made from rubbish washed up on the world’s beaches – to make people think too.

Words by Nicolette Jahn

SALE: Single Torn Sock – Abandoned Sand Castle Shovel – Crushed Lotion Bottle – Grungy Water Bottles freshly picked out of the Ocean. So much to find at the Inconvenience Store! At Sculpture by the Sea Marina DeBris, a Sydney-based art activist and trashion creator, has set up the Inconvenience Store. This play on words is a trademark of Marina’s work, which is rife with ironic titles. There’s also Turtle Food: “balloons that were all burst’; very tongue-in-cheek but not really funny at all because that’s actually what happens to it”. The entire display is satirical, but it is a type of humour that emphasises the severity of the ocean pollution situation. Visitors have described the items in the Inconvenience Store as repulsive, which after all is the intention when chewed gum, dental floss and used Band-Aids are put on display. Marina’s unique use of humour is perhaps one of her more vital tactics for reaching the audience with her message about pollution. Purely shaming the public with the damage our rubbish does to the ocean could dissuade an audience from paying attention to Marina’s work. However, incorporating a degree of satire and entertainment engages the spectator enough to make them more conscious about pollution. ‘I come up with a concept based on what I find and try to give it a name that has a double meaning. Hopefully that makes you think too. Then I struggle with a different problem, is it too funny that people won’t be alerted. That’s the hardest thing of what I’m doing; to make something that causes a change of some kind.’

For years Marina picked up rubbish along beaches from Los Angeles to Bondi and didn’t know what to do with it all. She felt that collecting wasn’t enough and wanted to do more. In 2009 she realised a great vehicle for communicating was two-dimensional art. Eventually her work evolved into three-dimensional sculptures, installations and even trashion (a portmanteau of trash and fashion). “I always loved working with my hands and it was just fun to try it and I had no idea where I was going with it all,” she says. Photographer Chris Jordan is one of Marina’s significant inspirations for creating shock-worthy works. “He shot a series of photos of the albatross who were ingesting plastic. The photos went totally viral. You know immediately what you’re looking at and the consequences of it is death – literally. But they are really beautiful images at the same time. He’s kind of the role model that if I could get anywhere near, that would be the sort of impact I would want to make. I think everyone who’s seen his images knows this pollution is not just an unattractive issue, it’s actually a dangerous issue.”  Marina never washes or alters the material she uses to maintain its ‘nasty’ look. However,
as an artist a part of Marina is driven to create something visually appealing enough to not  deter people from looking. Think about it this way: not many people take the time to stare  into their rubbish bins, so Marina has to make them want to look. ‘That is a challenge and I sometimes worry that I make things too beautiful, but I’ve had a couple of people that say the description is beautiful and disgusting. That’s my favourite sort of reaction to it because then it, hopefully, makes them think.’ This is a balancing act that follows her through every piece. The rubbish Marina collects is only a fraction of what is there because she is one person collecting from one, maybe two, beaches. Imagine everything else floating with the fish and wrapping itself around the sea life. At university, she studied jewellery metalsmithing then switched to graphic design. ‘I had an excellent teacher and it kind of stuck. I thought this is something I could probably get a job in. That was it, I was completely tunnelled to that. I loved it. I worked in New York City for big design firms. I absolutely enjoyed it until I started realizing I was  working for these big multi-million dollar corporations that only cared about the bottom dollar. My conscience sort of started to get to me but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’ All the while Marina continued her personal art projects. Despite loving her career as an artist, she has had her share of struggles. Emotionally it has affected her relationship in some respects. Her boyfriend would tell her to ‘go get a job’, but kicking and screaming, Marina would think “I know I have to, but I just can’t bear the thought of doing something I don’t love”. For a long time she pursued a career she did not feel the same passion for. She had more emotional hardship when people thought of her as spoiled for being able to survive with- out making money for any period of time. Marina in fact has worked hard since college, and even earlier, to support herself. “I’m not trained as an artist. I don’t really know what I’m doing technically in many respects and I have to just figure it out as I go. There are so many technical issues that I’ve run into and sometimes I just feel like giving up, thinking ‘what am I doing?’ and ‘I am not equipped to do this’, I just don’t know. So far, I’ve managed to get through it. Definitely loads of moments where I thought this is just way above my skill set and you just keep going at it.” It is refreshing to hear that someone wel linto her profession still has doubts about her skills, like many other artists do. It does not reflect on their talent in any way. “That’s part of what makes you realise you’re doing something you need to be doing. You just don’t give up easily and that’s the main thing.” Up until around late 2017, all her work was self-funded but lately she has received more commissioned work. One is for Tomra, a company that creates reverse vending machines for container deposits.“I made an outfit out of plastic bottles from the ocean just degraded to caps, tops and  bottoms. Just completely broken apart. The same with aluminium cans. That’s actually the material they recycle in their machines.” People reacted in the same dazzled/dis- gusted way they have to her other work. Marina has the self-awareness to critique her own work effectively. Especially when looking back on older work she notices the flaws but that “goes with the territory of being an artist”. Even with all of these creative projects under her belt she has not escaped ‘creator’s block’. That is when she decides she needs to take that project from another angle or set it aside for the moment. Despite all her struggles, Marina says she will never stop doing what she loves. She is proud to see that her style of work is becom- ing more popular. Kids are making art out of trash, which wasn’t the case ten years ago, but it is only in the last  year that ocean pollution has become more of a hot topic. “When I started it was more enjoyment for myself even though I still had that same feeling that I kind of want to shock people; I want to be able to do that. I’m not sure if I ever actually achieved that. The immediacy of it all made me push harder. I’m not saying the work is any more jarring but I think that’s  what I keep striving for. I almost want to do  something super shocking and it just never  seems to come out that way. There is always  an air of light in it or beauty or something. I  don’t know if that’s just ingrained in me, I just can’t seem to get there.”