Contemporary Art, Archaeology, and Plastics

This chapter will explore some of the ways in which the relationship between plastics and contemporary archaeology plays out through contemporary art. In the twentieth century, plastics transformed the world of visual art, allowing the development of photography and cinema, providing the material for innovative three-dimensional sculptures and, in the form of acrylic paints, proving essential to the development of entire artistic movements. Since the turn of the millennium, however, plastics have come to be seen as dirty. No longer symbolising optimism and innovation, plastics have become inextricably associated with mass consumption and waste, and the consequent environmental destruction. In response, there has been a growing trend for artists to use plastics as a symbol of pollution, the Anthropocene and climate crisis, in critique of the contemporary world. Interestingly, many of these artworks explicitly reference archaeological tropes of collection, classification, and display, suggesting an association between archaeology, contemporary art, and plastics that merits deeper investigation.