Breathe it, Pump it, Nurture it is a series of cyanotype prints on watercolour paper that explores the presence and impact of microplastics within the human body. The work considers how plastics, carried through water, enter and circulate within bodily fluids—lymph, blood, and cerebrospinal fluid—affecting the systems that sustain life.

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Through the interplay of water, plastic and light, Nina examines the physical and psychological relationship between the body and the environments it inhabits. Using refracted light and shadow cast through plastic materials, distorted and ambiguous forms emerge, resembling lungs, heart and breast. These images are then processed using the cyanotype method, combining light-sensitive chemistry, sunlight, and water.

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The works reference the essential fluids of the body—blood, sweat, tears and mother’s milk—highlighting both vulnerability and dependence. Grounded in a reliance on water and sunlight, the series draws attention to the invisible yet pervasive presence of plastic within these life-giving systems.

Breathe it, Pump it, Nurture it reflects the conditions of contemporary life and invites questions about the materials we live with, consume and ultimately embody.

 

Artists Bio

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Nina Garstang is a multidisciplinary environmental artist based in Brighton, UK. Working through an expanded understanding of material and process, her practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, video, printmaking, cyanotype photography, and drawing. 

Nina studied BA in Painting at the University of Brighton and MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, where she was awarded the Stanley Smith Scholarship. She exhibits locally, nationally and internationally, including London Art, SCOPE Miami, and Paradise RCA Milan. In 2024, she exhibited Entangle, a solo exhibition at Phoenix Art Space, Brighton, reflecting her ecological, multidisciplinary approach to artmaking and curation.

Alongside her studio practice, she teaches cyanotype workshops and community sessions, sharing knowledge of sustainable photographic processes and encouraging collaborative, environmentally conscious approaches to making.

She has undertaken residencies in Brighton, London, and Málaga and will participate in a residency in Almería, Spain this June. As part of The Joya: AiR programme which is rooted in ecological awareness and regenerative cultural practice, she will engage with the landscape of the Parque Natural Sierra María–Los Vélez, exploring its environment through sustainable, site-responsive methods.

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Artists Statement 

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Nina’s work explores the relationships between ecology, materiality and place, often engaging with sustainable, experimental approaches and making across media.  Childhood memories of time spent with family along this coast, alongside experiences of ‘big nature’ while travelling by road through South America and Australia in her twenties, have deeply rooted her practice in the land and seascape. Her innate understanding of the emotional and psychological impact on body through years of experience as a physical therapist has had a profound effect on the visceral quality in her work.  

She explores the entangled relationships between human and marine environments, informed by living and working on the Sussex coast. Nina currently works with discarded fishing rope, ghost netting and plastics collected from beaches near Shoreham Port. Transforming them into sculptural forms, drawing, prints & paintings that reflect ecological interconnection and our physical and emotional relationship to place. Alongside this, she uses experimental cyanotype processes that rely on elemental forces—sunlight, water and time. Nina’s research into ecology and embodied perception, considers how synthetic material, environment and body are interconnected and her material choices are informed by an interplay of emotional response and conceptual thinking about our relationship with nature.