May 4th 2007
I am thinking about materials. I am remembering that Sam doesn't use plastic bags. I am thinking about how upset she is by albatross colonies who are dying because they swallow so much plastic mistaking it for food floating on the surface of the Atlantic.
I am wondering whether it's possible to build purely with recycled materials. A decision like this will streamline the sculptural decisions as well as the conceptual ones, which will be useful. It will mean rather than spending money on materials. Materials gathering and processing needs more human time. I spend some time boiling and blending newsprint to see if I can get anything like clay to happen, but I can't.
Science Art Environment Residency at Durlston on the Jurassic Coast
ShapeShift; landscape in motion
This is a live record of research towards an artwork which takes as it's starting point the geology of the Jurassic coast - 185million years of the earth's history.
Abigail Reynolds is an artist working with two scientists, Sam Gibbs, a micropalentologist from Southampton Oceanography Centre and mathematician Bjorn Stanstede from the University of Surrey to analyse the landscape around Durlston Country Park.
They are working with a small group from the local community to explore specific points in the area nominated by the group members. These points in the landscape are gateways into considering the significance of the geology along the Jurassic Coast.
The final artwork will be exhibited in Durlston Castle over July and August 2007
Durlston castle
Radiolarian
ShapeShift
The title of this project, "Shapeshift; landscape in motion” makes clear that the premis of the project: the landscape is essentially fragile and unstable, shaped by a range of environmental factors changing over the millennia and now more rapidly shifting. Our traditional sense of the landscape as more powerfully aloof to human influence has undergone a reversal with cultural acceptance of anthropogenc climate change.
The focus of our enquiry is microfossils, markers of huge climate changes, which comprise the limestones and shales along the local coastline. As these come into being, evolve and become extinct, we see the changing climate in their shapes. In turn plankton are part of the macro-shape of the coastline, part of the story that determines which rocks are hard and will resist erosion, which will collapse into bays and valleys. The consideration of shapes on different scales, as meaningful markers in the landscape is therefore key to the direction of the project.
The final art work will be a large-scale sculpture built from locally sourced recycled materials, much of it from the castle itself, the site for the exhibition, which is currently undergoing refurbishment. This material decision puts the changed power dynamic between homosapiens and the natural environment centre-stage, reminding us that whole landscapes are now created by landfill.
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