A prize-winning Liverpool artist is holding an exhibition featuring work made from waste plastic.

The show, Strangers in a Strange Land, is being held at the Walker Art Gallery by Robyn Woolston, winner of the 2012 Liverpool Art Prize. It features nine large bales of waste plastic, weighing a combined 3,600 kilogrammes, arranged across the floor of the Victorian gallery.

The Walker Art Gallery stated that the show is designed to explore the theme of inorganic waste and ‘highlights our relationship with the Earth and its finite resources’.

Accompanying the installation is a series of photographs of the bales taken by Woolston, as well as an image of a natural burial ground in Warwickshire where the artist’s mother was buried. The image is designed to draw attention to how ‘an ecological burial which returns the body to the earth is contaminated by man-made materials amongst the decaying floral tributes consigned to the compost bin’.

The exhibition also features a book of photographs taken by the artist titled Waste. Product. Istanbul. The pictures were taken during Woolston’s residence in Istanbul and depict many of the waste ‘processes’ of the city, from the unofficial collectors, sorters and recyclers of the city’s waste (the ‘Papermen’) to stray dogs that live and scavenge amongst the garbage.

The final element of the show is an 1889 painting Strangers in a Strange Land by artist Albert Starling, from which the exhibition borrowed its name. The piece depicts refugee children and, according to the gallery, ‘represents the same people living on the fringes of society visible in Robyn's work’.

Speaking of her work in the exhibition, Woolston said: “Waste materials are abundantly available because of the way in which we consume. Strangers in a Strange Land offers a way to reassess the value of these materials so as to understand just how much we value their inherent possibilities."

The large bales were sourced from plastic recycling firm Centriforce Products, and would normally have been made into Stokbord recycled plastic board. Commenting on the show, Centriforce Managing Director Simon Carroll said: “As a Liverpool company committed to reducing the amount of plastic waste that goes to landfill or is exported, we were delighted to support Robyn on this project. Robyn is making a striking statement that will make many stop and think again about the issues surrounding plastics recycling."

The show runs from 23 March until 23 June 2013.

View photographs from Robyn Woolston’s book Waste. Product. Istanbul.