Frances Whitehead delves
into the intersection of nature and culture in her work. Her earlier projects incorporated computer-based visualization tools to make models of organic forms such as viruses, which she then adapted as sculpture. Recently, she has looked more specifically at the impact of human activity on watersheds, exploring creative systems of remediation, visualations of future urban development, and sculptural means to depict statistical information.

Primary Plus focuses on the relationship between design and disaster. For this project, Whitehead uses the classic strategy of bringing found objects into the gallery space, relying on the museum's authority as a framing device to allow viewers to reconsider objects that have other functions in the so-called real world. In this case, she offers a selection of large, commercially produced, inflatable objects that are designed to collapse and fold into small packages in order to be transported and reused in response to environmental and social disasters. These include bladders to hold drinking water for humanitarian needs, tanks to hold gray water for firefighting and other needs, and "booms" to contain toxic spills. Whitehead has chosen a selection of objects that can be edited and arranged in each exhibition venue to form an installation that suits the available space. At the close of the exhibition, Whitehead will return the inflatables to the company that produced them so they can be reused as product samples or in the field.

Whitehead wants to call attention to the many-layered ambiguities of these containers. They are sturdy, reusable, and made to help staunch environmental problems and so fit some aspects of sustainable design, but they are also emblematic of a culture that offers surface solutions rather than seeking to address root causes. In addition, Whitehead chose the specific examples presented in Beyond Green in part for their formal appeal; with their strong colors and simple forms, the sculptures look at home in the gallery. Once placed in that rarefied arena they strongly recall the industrial aesthetic of minimalism, which maintained an entirely different, particular chain of associations, which foreground the tension between the social and formal concerns of art and artistic practice.