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.
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.