Gyre, 2018

 GYRE  emerged from a mystery: an increasing number of cellophane balloons washing up on an isolated beach.

Southwest Point on Block Island, Rhode Island is a dynamic place, with eroding clay cliffs, boulders, waves rolling in off the Atlantic. Every kind of thing washes up, entire trees, machinery from fishing, dead animals.

But in 2008 masses of cellophane balloons began to appear: clinging to rocks, under seaweed, stuck in the cliffs. Instinctively I began to collect them. They were oddly beautiful – eroded messages and colours, strange inflated shapes. What started as curiosity turned into years of collecting and I now have hundreds.

These objects are resonant and mysterious, relic-like. Experimenting with them is a commemorative act – a way to process persistent nostalgia. But their continuing existence, the pollution they create, begs the question: how do we change our desires before they destroy us?