Mark Raymond Cross

Born 1955 in Auckland, New Zealand.

http://www.markcross.nu/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This painting refers to the several oceanic gyres around that world, current systems that tend to collect in their vortex's the detritus of the consumer societies which surround them. Most poignant to Pacific and to the world is the North Pacific Ocean Gyre - often called the Pacific Garbage Patch - which collects the consumer junk from North America and Asia creating huge floating masses of mainly plastic in its convergence zone North of Hawaii. This plastic does not decompose for many thousands of years but breaks down into ever smaller particles which are consumed into the food chain at every level. I have used  recent garbage here for visual effect but it is a metaphor for  the broken down polymers and other chemical sludge that permeate the upper columns of these oceanic vortexes. This, while using the pristinely clear waters of Niue ironically suggests what the Northern Pacific must have been like and warning the South Pacific of what it could be like without attention paid to such issues.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a sweeping generalisation that the most pressing problems in the world today are the result of complacency of the masses not to mention the people with the power to change things. So we have here a group of young people entertained by something outside the painting frame (perhaps television) while oblivious to an open dump-site of  consumer garbage being burnt off behind them.