The Japan Foundation Bangkok and ChangChui Creative Park are presenting an art exhibition, “Jurassic Plastic”, created by internationally renown Japanese artist Hiroshi Fuji. Originally devised for Sydney Festival 2018, the exhibit in Bangkok is housed at Chang Chui Creative Park. It begins Monday, 26 August 2019, and runs until Monday, 14 October 2019.

Intended for both children and adults, Jurassic Plastic features sculptures of dinosaurs created by the tremendous amount of unwanted toys from Japan and Thailand — an eye opener for anyone on the broader issue of consumerism and plastic waste.

Hiroshi Fuji conveys strong feelings about products made of plastic, which have mushroomed in our daily lives since the 1970s. In 1997, he started to keep and collect discarded plastic products and toys at home, resulting in the creation of his long-run project “Kaekko Bazar,” a platform where kids can exchange their unwanted toys with other second-hand toys.

Fuji soon discovers that, through the project, while attractive second-hand toys are always immediately taken by kids, broken plastic toys and freebie toys distributed massively through fast-food chains are left un-exchanged. The number of unwanted toys, mostly made of plastic, that Fuji has collected, reached over 50,000 items. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Fuji says that over-produced and consumed plastic products are thrown away in large quantities all over the world. They flow into rivers by floods and spread widely into the oceans, adversely affecting marine life and the marine eco-system.

In Jurassic Plastic, Fuji creates large-scale installations and sculptures of dinosaurs and animals using unwanted plastic toys collected from Japan and Thailand. With the fact that crude oil, the raw material of plastic, is produced from the corpses of Jurassic creatures such as dinosaurs, the exhibition not only provides amusement with its colourful visual impact but also inspires us to consider the role of plastic in our lives, shedding light on our collective consumption and waste.

ChangChui Creative Park is open Mondays to Fridays, 1pm to 10pm (closed Wednesdays); and from 11am to 10pm on Saturdays and Sundays. The exhibition is free of charge.

Also, a series of workshops for both kids and grown-ups will be conducted throughout the exhibition period. The organisers also welcome donations of your own unwanted toys, which will be used for part of the exhibition. For more info, please visit the event’s facebook page.

Photo credit: ChangChui

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