Esperance mother and daughter lead community campaign to transform marine debris into art

Michelle and Sam Crisp spent months preparing for this week’s art exhibition opening.  (ABC Esperance: Emily Smith)

On a bright summer’s evening on Western Australia’s south coast, Michelle Crisp prepares to address a humming crowd.

The Esperance resident has spent months creating many of the bright blue and green art pieces that cover the Cannery Art Centre and are ready to be auctioned or sold.

Yet only months ago, the baskets, earrings, doormats and ornaments that so perfectly represent the Esperance colour palate were a rotting mass of fishing gear at the bottom of the ocean.

“This is a global issue, the plastics issue,” Ms Crisp said.

“Some of us look to places like Indonesia and say, ‘It’s a dreadful situation there’.

“But we still have [plastics] on our beaches here and it’s not just from overseas, it is our local plastics as well.”

She hopes her exhibition will raise both awareness and money to help combat that issue.

A whale-carcass-sized problem

Almost every morning, Ms Crisp and her daughter Sam start the day combing 10-Mile Lagoon, a short drive west of the south coast town, for rubbish.

But on a winter day last year, they arrived to find the ocean had spat out a challenge.

“There was this huge whale-carcass-sized piece of marine debris down the end of the beach,” Sam said.

“And that was the start.”

The pair decided the 5-tonne mass of rope, likely from a long-line fishing vessel, had no business on their pristine, world-famous beach.

So, they rallied the community and spent weeks cutting it with gardening shears, dragging it up a steep sets of stairs and off the beach.

But they did not want it simply sent to landfill.

“That’s just contributing to a different kind of issue in a different landscape,” Sam said.

“[We wanted] to make this a positive thing.”

Instead, they formed The 10-Mile Collective, bringing together a group of locals to not only remove the rubbish but transform it.

“We thought this is an ideal opportunity to make it a community arts project,” Ms Crisp said.

An artist from the Cocos-Keeling Islands had recently visited and taught them weaving skills, which the pair enthusiastically passed on to the rest of the community.

Ms Crisp then spent weeks attending local markets, encouraging others to take up the craft.

She also put on workshops at a local primary school.

“The [children] just grabbed the gear and made stuff,” she said.

“It was a really great message of hope for the future that our younger generation really are caring.”

By the end of January, they had enough local creations to put on an exhibition to raise funds for conservation.

Raising funds for the planet

Jackie Smith was wowed by the turquoise-green, sea-blue and sandy-white colour scheme that greeted her on opening night.

“This is the Esperance colours. It just looks spectacular,” she said.

Another patron, Julia Rooke, agreed.

“I think it’s absolutely fantastic and I think it’s a real wake-up call to us all.”

All funds raised from the sale of the art were for Tangaroa Blue, a non-profit geared at removing marine debris from the ocean.

On opening night, they raised $1,500, and the exhibition is set to run for another four weeks.

Sam said the whole experience had been inspirational.

“Quite often environmental issues these days can be quite overwhelming,” she said.

“Just the scale they’re happening at is so overwhelming.

“So to have a local issue like this, and quite a simple feasible solution to it, it’s so epic to have the whole community engaged.

“[And] for us to connect with really passionate individuals, [it’s been] super inspiring.”