About the artwork on display:
SMALL WORKS OF GREAT SCALE
Historically, the act of adornment; wearing jewellery; a badge or an amulet, was a means to tell the world who we are, what we stand for, or whom we would like to be. These relatively small objects had the potential to speak of large issues. The works in this collection, incorporate found materials that appear to have little monetary value, shells, quills, minerals etc, yet they demonstrate the rich biodiversity needed by the other species that humanity lives alongside. These works distil thoughts and ideas into a badge of affiliation, a momenta mori for a world whose biodiversity is reducing year on year.
Working clockwise from the top of the wall display:
A. SEAWEED
This necklace is made from Knotweed Wrack, a species of seaweed. As it grows, it fabricates bladders that fill with CO2, as these float, they keep the plant upright, increasing its surface area and ability to absorb carbon more efficiently from the surrounding seawater. It is now known that Seaweeds can absorb twenty times more carbon than an equivalent area of trees.
B. PEW RINGS
The close grain of this 150-year-old pitch pine signifies that it grew in a very cold northern climate. It was later fashioned into church pews that resided for 60 years in Mangersta’s Free Presbyterian Mission Hall in Uig on the west coast of the Outer Hebrides. This modest building was the mid-week place of worship for local residents until the 1990’s. This wood will now encircle a finger in a different type of veneration, one that honours the biodiversity of a small beach on Lewis. Some of the pieces in this display contain additions such as a ‘cup’ of seaweed; a ‘mermaids’ purse’ and the spinal disc from the tail of a porpoise.
C. MIGRATION NECKLACE
This necklace is formed from 155 pieces of gannet quills, each representing 20 miles of the Northern Gannets epic migration from the west coast of Lewis to the west coast of Africa.
With a 6ft wingspan, pristine white plumage and black wingtips, the Northern Gannet is Europe’s largest breeding seabird. They stay loyal to their breeding sites returning to the colony they were born in. The feathers for this piece were moulted by birds from colonies on the Bass Rock and at St Kilda.
D. QUARTZ RINGS
The island of Lewis is a great resource for stone, it includes some of the oldest rock on earth, specifically the three-billion-year-old Lewisian gneiss complex, a crystalline rock that appears granite-like, but contain marble, quartzite and mica schist. In this collection of rings, shards of quartz have been fashioned into wearable pieces. Appearing almost as miniature landscapes in their own right, and reminders the tumultuous upheavals the earth has undergone in the deep time of geology. In one ring, a pistachio green veneer of epidote can be seen, this mineral seeped into a fracture millions of years ago and solidified under extreme heat.
E. SKATE PURSE
Very occasionally an empty egg case of a skate fish can be found on the strandline of local beaches, tangled amongst seaweed it can be difficult to see. The gold bark-like strands on this ‘edited’ sample identify it as the vacated egg sac of the flapper skate, one of the largest skate species in the world, reaching up to 2.8m in length and 2m wide and which can live for up to 100-year-old. Little is known about their deep sea lives, but they are thought to take around 11 years to reach sexual maturity, with females only breeding every other year. This late maturity, and an incubation period of over18 months, affords a very slow recovery from population decline.
F. BLUE MUSSELS
Three brooches display circles of the blue mussel shell set in brass to depict stylised versions of their physiology.
Colonies of common blue mussels have been a crucial source of food for humans for thousands of years (shell middens have frequently been found on archaeological sites that date back to 525 AD). The young, fertilized larvae are at sea for between 3 and 6 months and it is thought they can detect existing, successful, colonies and attach themselves nearby. The byssal threads they manufacture to bond onto sea-battered rock surfaces, are one of the strongest bio adhesives known to man. Collectively they are said to be eco system engineers, in that they create reefs, stabilizing surfaces. As filter feeders (25 litres of seawater pass through each individual mussel every day), they play a vital role in coastal waters by removing bacteria and toxins. They are very effected by, and reflective of their environment.
G. EAGLE
Scotland holds almost the entire UK population of golden eagles. With wingspans of over two meters and plummeting speeds of 150 mph, they are both a revered and persecuted species. They typically avoid developed areas, in the Hebrides they occupy vast, remote, inaccessible places, inhabiting nests that have been in use for many generations, and in some cases renovating eyries that lay abandoned for decades. In many indigenous communities, the eagle has played a significant role in ceremonies that honour periods of transition, beginnings and endings, when the air is thin and people can enter into rare places that are not quite earthly.
The eagle’s feet exhibited here are those of a juvenile female (H48) * who flew too close to civilisation (our village) and was killed in a collision with electrical cables. Her four toed, feathered feet could exert a massive pressure of over 400 pounds per square inch. Her loss was mourned in the village.
H. AMBERGRIS
This wearable timber vessel contains one gram of Ambergris. It has been perforated with a series of holes that represent a visual notation of the complex clicks and pulsing sounds made by sperm whales.
Sperm whales predate solely on giant squid. Once digested, the sharp beaks, claws, serrated suckers and barbed clasps of the giant squid, cause blockages and irritate the digestion of the whale. A waxy substance is formed around these hostile objects to protect the whales intestinal lining and is expulsed as a floating plug called Ambergris. This substance has been highly valued by perfumers for centuries as a fixative that allows scents to last much longer. Ambergris takes years to form. It is only produced by sperm whales, and only by an estimated one percent of them. Once expelled, it often floats for years before making landfall. The slim chances of finding it has led chemists on a quest to find viable synthetic alternatives. Sperm Whales are the only species on Earth where an individual can have a home range that is transglobal, travelling a million miles in their lifetime. They have an understanding of our planet and are connected to it in ways that are alien to humans.
* The death of this eagle was logged by Nature Scotland as accidental.
It’s inclusion in this exhibit is under licence No 316158 to safeguard protected species.