Me and My Plastic: Ghillie Dhu

Wearable art for performative walk, non-recycable plastic, Harris Tweed Suit (work in progress), 2023-24

In 2019 I began collecting every piece of non-recyclable, single-use plastic that came into my life. What started as a one-month experiment, expanded over the course of a year to culminate in 6 large trash bags filled with my personal plastic waste, weighing in at over 25lbs. I am transforming my plastic hoard into a wearable artwork, creating a “Ghillie Suit” made entirely out of the shredded, braided, and sewn plastics. My plastic Ghillie suit will be worn for a new durational walking performance, traversing 198 miles across Scotland from Broughty Ferry on the East Coast (where I lived at the time and collected all the plastic), to the wood at Gairloch. Gairloch is the location of the mythical figure from Scottish folklore called the "Ghillie Dhu,” a solitary male fairy, clothed in leaves and bark, who lives in the birch woods of the Scottish Highlands. From this mythological figure the Scots created what became known as “Ghillie suits”, full-body camouflage, originally worn by gamekeepers on Scottish Estates, the first use in combat was by The Lovat Scots, a Scottish Highland regiment, in the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Ghillie suits are now widely used by military snipers, hunters, and are a regular feature in first person shooter video games. For this journey across Scotland, my walking companion will be an AR (Augmented Reality) visualisation of the Ghillie Dhu, at the end of the journey I will leave him forever in the wood at Gairloch. I will stop along the way to interact with local communities to discuss plastic waste and invite people to sign my suit and pledge to change their plastic ways.