Artist Litters as a Protest Against, Um, Littering
September 26, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Mark McGowan
Last Sunday, controversial artist Mark McGowan went down to London’s River Thames to dump a load of plastic. We gave him a call to ask why.


“I was walking along the side of the river and it was completely full of plastic,” Mark explains over the phone. “So I decided to dump plastic in the Thames as a protest against waste and the over-production of plastic.”

But when it came to doing the filthy deed last Sunday, Mark encountered a bit of resistance.

“I sent out emails to people saying I was going to do it,” he says. “When I arrived on Sunday, there were two river boats, a James Bond-type dingy, a police car and some environmental people. They said, ‘You know we’re not gonna let this happen today, don’t you?’ So I asked, ‘How many people have you arrested in the last year, or ten years, for throwing stuff in the Thames?’ and they told me none. ‘But the only reason you caught me was because I told you I was doing it,’ I said. ‘I think you need to put more work in to catching people!’”

In case you don’t know, Mark is a performance artist with quite a history as a protestor. He took on class prejudice towards cleaners – while he was, naturally, working as a cleaner – by rolling through London in his marigolds; he pushed a monkey nut with his nose to Number 10 Downing Street to draw attention to the financial predicament of students; and, more recently, he left a tap running in an art gallery to expose Thames Water’s shocking record when it comes to, yes, you’ve guessed it, wasting water.

But despite his penchant for provocation, Mark is a serious artist and passionate environmentalist.

“It’s a throwaway society,” Mark says. “And plastic is the number one throwaway commodity. The whole idea of reusing is bad for capitalist society because of the need to keep producing. But you’ve got to forget the word ‘recycling’ and start thinking about why we use so much.”

In January, Mark plans to take rubbish from the local dump to Trafalgar Square to force people to consider our throwaway culture.

And it’s this kind of in-your-face attitude and engagement with a cause that sets him apart from many of his contemporaries.

“Lots of artists take an issue, pick it up and drop it down again,” he explains. “They only make something to sell it. And very few people are trying to do something or say something. But you’ve got to get involved in it. On Sunday, I was accused of fly-tipping. I told them ‘I think it’s art. Other people throwing stuff in the Thames, that’s fly tipping! Consider it, people are doing this every day.’ Artists have that power to make you consider something.”

To find out more about Mark, and to watch a video of ‘Operation Plastic’, click here.