This is one of the pieces made for the Verdant Works Exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’, Autumn 2018. The Arctic whalers main target were the right whales, Eubalaena glacialis. These were the ‘right’ whales to hunt because they had thick oil-rich blubber and had long baleen. The long baleen plates sieved out small shrimp and other food from huge mouthfuls of seawater. …
This is one of the pieces in the Verdant Works Exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’, Autumn 2018. As whaling decreased the populations of whales, the whalers hunted other marine mammals to maintain their profitability. Seal skins were a valuable commodity and to maximise the economic return, whaling ships could leave earlier from British ports, pick up men from places like …
This is one of the pieces in the Verdant Works Exhibition ‘The Arctic Whaling Year’, Autumn 2018. Many whaleships from English and Scottish mainland ports called into Orkney and Shetland to pick up further supplies and additional crew. The whaling agent Hay and Co in Lerwick, Shetland recruited local men, who were good sailors and cheap to employ, to act …
At the end of June the Eleventh International Melville Conference took place at King’s College in London. I was fortunate enough to be invited to talk about my work at the British Library as part of this event. A range of artists including writer Philip Hoare, film maker David Shaerf, curator Michael Hall and actor/director Shelley Piasecka talked about and …
One of the defining things about being British is our obsession about the weather. It is a safe topic of conversation and a source of constant interest. But our climate is also generally benign so it’s rarely more than an inconvenience (more of that in another post…) For the last few years an important component of my practice has been …
Last week I was privileged to get up close to the iconic Cambridge Museum of Zoology Fin Whale skeleton during its rehang. The museum is currently closed for redevelopment but the Collections Manager Matt Lowe invited me down to see the whale in its final stages of restoration. The whale’s new position is suspended from the ceiling of a new …
An important component of my art practice is research. It informs and nudges my work. Accuracy in some ways is vital to me, as is the ability to play with imagery, text and other found content. Quite often I will collect something with no real reason or plan for its use, but am guided by a gut instinct that it …