For the past 12 months Coffs Harbour artist Jeremy Sheehan has been collaborating with people across the Pacific to put together an exhibition for Sydney's Sculpture by the Sea.
Trans Migration is a project involving almost 100 people, including students from Coffs Harbour TAFE and artists from 22 nations including Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.
The exhibition aims to highlight the plight of the mutton bird, whose annual migration from Coffs Harbour to Asia is being affected by ocean plastics.
"The mutton bird is hardwired to pick up anything they think may be food," Mr Sheehan said.
"Sadly the adults pick up ocean plastics and bring [them] back to the burrow, where they regurgitate it and feed it to the chicks.
"The chicks then don't put on enough muscle mass and end up starving to death or become too weak to take off."
Mutton birds begin their long migration from Coffs Harbour towards Asia in April each year.
In the past 40 years, the mutton bird population has dropped by 30 per cent and it is feared more species would be affected if the plastics problem was not turned around.
Mr Sheehan and the TAFE students made life-sized, wire-framed birds with 'skeletons' of plastic waste.
The bird sculptures were then sent to artist communities throughout the Pacific, which finished the outer layer of the birds in local materials before returning them.
"The work is about a sense of loss," Mr Sheehan said.
"When the birds are installed here they will decay and leave a plastic skeleton behind.
"It's a metaphor for what is happening to these birds, and to their islands."
Trans Migration is one of the exhibitions at Sydney's Sculpture by the Sea which opens this Thursday.
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