Chunks of "plastiglomerate" found by Canadian artist Kelly Jazvac on a Hawaiian beach form part of this year's Milan Triennale exhibition, illustrating how the anthropocene era is leading to the formation of new man-made minerals.
The hybrid material is the result of plastic items washed up on the shore fusing with shells, sand and other natural materials when burnt in campfires lit on the beach.
The ready-made artworks are presented as a marker of the anthropocene, a proposed new geological era where human impact has become the dominant force on the earth's geology.

"The heavier fragments could potentially be preserved in the sediment record, leaving a permanent human-made mark in the Earth's stratiography," reads the exhibition text, which describes the objects as "fossils of the future". "I think it is important to show them because of the warning signs they indicate and the curiosity they generate," Jazvac told Dezeen. "I find them beautiful and horrific at the same time."
The objects are on display as part of Broken Nature: Design Takes On Human Survival, the exhibition that forms the XXII International Exhibition of La Triennale di Milano in Milan, Italy.

Curated by Paola Antonelli, the exhibition seeks to examine humankind's fractured relationship with the natural world and its resources, as well as what can be done to reverse the damage.
The exhibition is "about design that has to do with the environment, wi...