LIVIDITY
Lividity is an ongoing project that explores coral bleaching and its associated factors; a consequence of rising sea acidity and ocean temperatures.
During bleaching events the corals will expel the algae living in their tissues, leaving behind the animal of the coral and turning it completely white. Just before this happens the corals will phosphoresce, like a bruise or the aurora Borealis it signals a defence strategy, an attempt to survive and a reminder of the delicate and fatal symbiosis of life.
Inspired by the 1871 novel 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, a story of science fiction that would go on to influence the way artists explore hidden worlds, through Andre Breton and the Surrealism movement but also to contribute towards the invention of underwater photography by the Williamson brothers in 1912. A technical curiosity once seen as a return to nature but in reality has played its part in our desire to conquer it.
It is the relationship between industry and nature in the anthropocene that this work seeks to consider through layering objects, representations and speculative futures Lividity presents fact, fiction and fantasies around the endangered landscape beneath the surface.
From coral skeletons, to macro algae and archival images, coral reefs are displaced and re-imagined. Using material and process led photography to document fictional, endangered and extinct corals, via salt, bleach, digital and etching techniques to reveal the fragility and beauty of a tortured ecosystem.
3D renders created from coral skeletons explore the multifaceted dangers these sessile creatures face, a failure to adapt, new skeletons growing deformed and inadequate. The Fibre Etch mimics the acts of the bleaching process, when applied to a silk cotton mix it destroys the plant based fibres leaving only the animal that is weak, damaged and without function, whilst bleach, watercolour and acid distort, illuminate and mutate digital negatives from black and white archive images whilst macroalgea come into the foreground as potential solutions.
Though the work is guided by fact, it navigates ecological crisis through the surreal, fantasy of past, fictional figures, species that no longer exist and spaces that are impossible. Fiction grafting onto reality as we have to look back into the ecosystem to help reset its equilibrium.
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Macroalgae Scan (2022)
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During bleaching events the corals will expel the algae living in their tissues, leaving behind the animal of the coral and turning it completely white. Just before this happens the corals will phosphoresce, like a bruise or the aurora Borealis it signals a defence strategy, an attempt to survive and a reminder of the delicate and fatal symbiosis of life.
Inspired by the 1871 novel 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, a story of science fiction that would go on to influence the way artists explore hidden worlds, through Andre Breton and the Surrealism movement but also to contribute towards the invention of underwater photography by the Williamson brothers in 1912. A technical curiosity once seen as a return to nature but in reality has played its part in our desire to conquer it.
It is the relationship between industry and nature in the anthropocene that this work seeks to consider through layering objects, representations and speculative futures Lividity presents fact, fiction and fantasies around the endangered landscape beneath the surface.
From coral skeletons, to macro algae and archival images, coral reefs are displaced and re-imagined. Using material and process led photography to document fictional, endangered and extinct corals, via salt, bleach, digital and etching techniques to reveal the fragility and beauty of a tortured ecosystem.
3D renders created from coral skeletons explore the multifaceted dangers these sessile creatures face, a failure to adapt, new skeletons growing deformed and inadequate. The Fibre Etch mimics the acts of the bleaching process, when applied to a silk cotton mix it destroys the plant based fibres leaving only the animal that is weak, damaged and without function, whilst bleach, watercolour and acid distort, illuminate and mutate digital negatives from black and white archive images whilst macroalgea come into the foreground as potential solutions.
Though the work is guided by fact, it navigates ecological crisis through the surreal, fantasy of past, fictional figures, species that no longer exist and spaces that are impossible. Fiction grafting onto reality as we have to look back into the ecosystem to help reset its equilibrium.
Coral Sceleton Extrusion (2021)
Digital archival image, chemical manipulation (2021)
