Ruth Molliet’s FOFO (Fear of Finding Out) is immersive in a few different ways. Firstly, it is physically immersive. You are literally forced through a corridor of recycled plastic, turned into beautiful structures.
Forced, not by hand, but by nature of the coercion of the title; fear of finding out. You are goaded, almost, into exploring the exhibition in as much detail as possible, because FOFO very much evokes FOMO, and there is no way I’m missing out on a chance to find out something I might be scared to find out. Because then I’d be scared that I’d lost out on knowledge.
And that’s not just my own apprehensions, that’s why we’re here. The exhibition is a critique on the impact of mass-produced and single-use plastic on the planet. Using recycled plastics to reproduce plant species that have been directly impacted by it, with notable declines in natural occurrences.
I imagine most of us are familiar with microplastics, and their impact on sea, soil and water supplies, but there are knock-on effects in how that industry changes natural landscapes. It is often easy to assume that much of this damage is from overseas factories, but dairy farms have high demand for plastic bottles, and the farms themselves create vast monocultures of grass with more diverse species of weaker, less resilient plants kept at bay by cattle.
And even then, it’s not just about industry, there are personal and communal failings, in that fly tipping has become a passive issue. Something we’re just used to. Something we tut at, but which one incident can distribute as much plastic as a supermarket in a week.
What’s especially lovely about FOFO is that it feels very personal. Kind of like a conversation between you and the artist, rather than a list of things we’re all being collectively told off for.
That approach is definitely useful, because we’re not all being told off, but we shouldn’t assume that the person stood next to us is on the same page either. If you’re anti-waste, you’d be amazed at who couldn’t care less, or who actively disbelieves climate science or main-stream news, about our relationship with the planet.
In the centre of the room, three words stand out: neglected, abused, ignored. They are a personal response, sharing rage at the state of the planet, not definitions of the state of species (those are shown alongside: vulnerable, endangered, extinct). So, no-one is hearing those same words over and over again, and reinforcing a detachment from conservation.
We are, all, being spoken to by an artist whose carefully and concisely built an exhibition that reminds people that protecting the planet takes conversations, collaboration, and conviction.
I might not win over the guy down the road that fly-tipped a freezer in the alley last week, but I can make him realise it is his neighbours who care about this, not just some imagined ‘others’ who are out to make his life harder.
FOFO is blunt but very approachable and, perhaps more importantly, strikingly beautiful.
Ruth Molliet: FOFO is at The Atkinson until 8th March 2025
Find out more at www.theatkinson.co.uk/exhibition/ruth-molliet
Words, Kathryn Wainwright