Glacier is a collaborative work by sculptor and artist Carolyn Cardinet and media artist Angela Barnett that brings together sculptural form and moving image to address the urgent environmental impact of plastic pollution. The project emerged from Cardinet’s experience walking along a beach, confronted by the sheer volume of plastic debris washed ashore—everyday waste made visible, unavoidable, and troubling.

Constructed from discarded plastic waste and polystyrene boxes collected around Port Phillip Bay, the sculptural elements reference fragile, glacial forms while embodying the very materials contributing to environmental degradation. These physical structures are fused with Barnett’s projected imagery of the diminishing Sólheimajökull glacier in Iceland, linking local pollution to global ecological collapse. The work collapses distance between cause and consequence, shoreline and ice field, consumption and loss.

Exhibiting at Cube 37, Frankston Arts Centre, Glacier invites viewers to reflect on the invisible pathways of contamination: plastic breaking down into microplastics, plankton ingesting them, fish consuming plankton, and humans ultimately entering the cycle. What appears remote or abstract becomes intimate and inescapable.

Positioned between beauty and unease, Glacier is intended to function both as an artwork and an environmental statement—one that asks audiences to consider their own role within these systems and the cumulative impact of human activity on the planet’s most vulnerable environments.