Ocean Blues

Tags

Conservation, Exhibition, Fishing, gallery, Marine, Marine Conservation, Ocean, plastic, Pollution

Earlier this month, the new Spotlight Gallery exhibition, Ocean Blues, opened at Brighton Museum. The Spotlight Gallery, which previously held the Chilled to the Bone: Ice Age Sussex exhibition was created to allow changing exhibitions of around one year duration showcasing collections which have been in long term storage or which have never been previously displayed. This specific theme was chosen to help highlight some major ecological concerns faced both locally and globally.

This new exhibition looks at some of the man made problems faced by the marine environment, and is separated into three themes – Overfishing and Bycatch, Pollution and a final case looking at conservation and other initiatives to help protect the marine environment.

The first theme on overfishing and bycatch gives a brief overview of different destructive fishing methods, before turning its focus onto the various methods of tuna production. It looks at how large scale commercial tuna fishing is destructive to thousands of other species caught in longline ‘dolphin friendly’ fisheries, which decimate seabird populations, and Fish Aggregation Device (FAD) supported purse seine fisheries, which capture huge numbers of other species along with the tuna.

The second case focuses on plastic pollution as one of the greatest threats faced by our seas. Plastics are a fantastically versatile material, with one very major drawback – they never goes away. Almost every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence somewhere on the planet. Instead of rotting away, plastic breaks up into ever smaller pieces. With massively increased levels of plastic production over the last decade — especially in disposable, single use plastics — this has led to plastic polluting the seas, from large chunks capable of choking whales all the way down to micro plastics on a planktonic scale. This section then continues to look at some other pollutants in the oceans, as well as some unusual effects of pollution, including its contribution to piracy off the coast of Somalia.

The final case looks at some of the things we are doing locally and internationally to help reduce the problems faced by our seas. We look at more sustainable fishing, using new technology and different methods to drastically reduce the number of other species bycaught, including the use of streamers on longlines and longline fishing at night – both of which reduce bird fatalities. We also look at both the positives and negatives of aquaculture, and highlight some of the better choices in farmed seafood. The second focus of this case is on Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ’s). These zones are designed to help protect important and vulnerable marine environmnents from destructive human activities. Brighton is particularly well placed in having one of the first MCZs stretching from Brighton Marina to Beachy Head. We also look at the species which will be protected if the Beachy Head East MCZ – stretching from Beachy Head to Hastings, and currently under consideration – is protected. Finally we look at methods to reduce plastic waste entering the environment. This ranges from recycling plastic to developing new materials – illustrated by some cutting edge new bioplastic made by the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. This plastic has been made from  waste prawn shells from the food industry, which currently go to fertiliser production or landfill. After use the bioplastic rots away naturally, or can be used in fertiliser production.

As a showcase for underused collections this exhibition uses a large quantity of material which has not been on display either since entering the museum, or since the mid-20^th century. These include a 3 month old wandering albatross chick, seal and dolphin skeletons, an otter, and several spirit preserved specimens.

There has also been an increase in the provision of handling objects and multimedia, in response to feedback from the previous exhibition. The popular cave bear skull has been replaced with a replica False Killer Whale skull, but this has been supplemented by a number of other handling objects supporting the stories discussed in the exhibition. We have also kindly been provided video footage by both Greenpeace and the Plastic Oceans Foundation, and these clips feature in the gallery. We also have a printed gallery trail linked to the handling objects and multimedia aspects, designed to be easily usable by those with visual impairments.

 

I hope you enjoy the exhibition, and would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped put together the exhibition, especially Georgina, Mike, Steve, Roy, Russ, Alex, Kerrie, Peter, Alexia and Derek, all of whom were instrumental in getting the exhibition finished on time.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read all about it – World War 1 in literature

Tags

books, Brighton Museum, Caroline Sutton, Exhibition, First World War, great war, literature, War Stories, world war one, ww1

It’s a very exciting day today for the people at the Brighton Museum as it’s the press day for the War Stories:Voices from the First World War exhibition.

The exhibition has been years in the planning and will hopefully introduce young and old to some of the unheard stories about how the First World War affected the lives of some of Brighton and Hove’s residents.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the centenary events around WW1 which will last for the next four years, as I’ve been in a series of meetings with museum staff who have planned this display for years. My children are also studying it at school and have written heart-breaking stories and poems about how they imagined life at war would be.

A lot of my knowledge around the Great War has come from literature. It was a time when war poetry flourished with soldiers writing from the trenches. There are also some great novels written during and after which bring the period to life. The war caused such a seismic shift in the lives and culture of all the countries involved, it has provided a rich source for literary exploration.

I thought I’d do a list of some of the books, writings and TV series I’d recommend to anyone who would like to immerse themselves in the period.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain.

I read this memoir of Vera Brittain for my A Level set text. Set between the years of 1900 to 1925, it tracks Brittain’s childhood, years of education and falling in love. As a teenager, I was a similar age to Brittain going through similar issues with parents, boys and applying for university.

I was so immersed in the book when I read it for the first time that I burst into tears at a surprise tragic moment while travelling on the tube one morning to my Saturday job in Oxford Street.

The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker

These novels explore the experience of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh and their subsequent lives. Barker weaves the lives of real-life people such as poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and the real-life psychoanalyst, William Rivers.

Beautifully written and thought-provoking, the novels explore the dilemma of the military doctor who needs to cure his patients to send them back out to face death on the Front.

 

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

This hugely popular novel written in 1993 has been adapted into a stage-play, a film and a TV series. It’s a love story but my main memory of the novel is how it manages to capture the horror of the trenches.

 

 

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

It’s almost impossible to read the novels above without reaching for a book of poetry from the WW1 soldier poets.  Angry, sad, philosophical and patriotic, these poems are by men who faced death while serving their country and capture all the complex emotions they felt in beautiful lyrics. Poems from Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke.

I once made a 3am pilgrimage to the grave of Rupert Brooke who wrote The Soldier while on holiday on the island of Skyros. Here are the first three lines of The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. (You probably know them already.)

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst

This novel begins just before the First World War and follows the life of a fictional war poet Cecil Vance.  It explores the themes of memory and literary heritage as well as the history of gay culture in the UK. It also captures the changes to the middle-classes post-war.

 

 

I’m about to read The Children’s Book by AS Byatt which covers a period of life before and after the Great War. It’s an extremely thick book and will probably take me the four years of commemoration events to finish but it’s meant to be good.

 

 

 

TV 

I thought I’d also recommend the BBC TV series The Village written by Peter Moffatt which was on last year. It’s a brilliant drama looking at the effects of the war on a small village in Derbyshire. It’s quite harrowing but extremely well acted with John Simm and Maxine Peake starring. You can only buy it on DVD at the moment but there is going to be a second series, so maybe they will repeat it.

 

 

Caroline Sutton, Blogger in Residence

 

 

 

An insight into Subversive Design

Tags

Artist, Exhibition, Subversive

Back in June 2013, I was invited by the Creative Programming team to get involved in programming and managing some of the Subversive Season events. It has been an exciting venture and has offered a very valuable opportunity to talk to a range of artists, designers and makers about their contribution to and interpretation of the exhibition. I was keen for the events to offer an insight into the curatorial theme, the artists’ intentions and the creative processes that the exhibition incorporates. The result was Wear if you Dare!, An insight into Subversive Design and the upcoming Subversive Ceramics workshop with Carole Windham.

Wear if you Dare! workshop

Inspired by the work Medical Heirlooms by Tamsin van Essen, local textile artist Sandrine Case proposed making and manipulating underwear that subverts perceptions of sexiness. Medical Heirlooms is a series of ceramic pots inspired by seventeenth century drug jars used by apothecaries. The artist manipulates and interrupts conventional ceramic processes so that the jars mimic symptoms of various hereditary diseases such as syphilis, osteoporosis and psoriasis. Tamsin van Essen talks about the stigma attached to such diseases and her fascination with the viewer’s simultaneous sense of attraction and repulsion to the objects she makes. During the Wear if you Dare! workshop in mid November 2013 participants used latex, wax and needlework to sabotage brassieres, knickers and Y-fronts creating grand, grotesque and fetishistic interpretations of ‘provocative underwear’. This bespoke set of undies would no doubt provoke a mixed response if the makers dared to wear them!

Wear if you Dare! workshop

An Insight into Subversive Design took place in late November 2013. After a tour of the exhibition with Curator Stella Beddoe there were a series of short talks by four of the exhibiting artists; Julian Walker, Carole Windham, Jonathan Boyd and Simone Brewster.

Julian Walker speaks with care about the disruptive dynamics at play in his series of Interventionist embroidery. He describes how unpicking, interrupting and adding to samplers engages him in a dialogue with the original maker that is unreciprocated. A sampler is a piece of embroidery produced as a demonstration or test of skill in needlework. The oldest surviving samplers were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries. The work was initiated through a project for the Embroiderers’ Guild so Julian has from the beginning faced ethical criticism and questioning about the works and the potential destruction of heritage. Julian explains that there is an added complexity to the ethics. Samplers are historically produced by young girls, and he is all too aware of the uneasy sense of violation that the process of unpicking and stitching into the samplers creates.

Carole Windham is a ceramic artist whose roots are in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Carole is fascinated by psychoanalysis – her piece Venus with a Penis is one of a series of works that depict Freudian theory. Her piece Claire – also on display in Subversive Design – portrays the female alter-ego of ceramic artist Grayson Perry. Carole speaks about the process of interviewing Grayson in 2002 and the resulting series of works. She goes on to explain that her interest in Grayson was part of a wider project in which she portrayed a number of contemporary artists. The project was an enquiry into what she defines as a division between ceramics and fine art.

Jonathan Boyd conveys his fascination with language, words and stuff. A maker and jeweler from Glasgow, Jonathan sees making as a means to sharing his experiences and thoughts. He describes how the spoken word, overheard conversation, poetry, literature, the body and the objects associated language all inspire and inform his delicate yet complex and bold works. He questions and asks the audience to answer whether he is being intentionally subversive or whether that comes through the process of creating.

Simone Brewster shares how the invitation to exhibit at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery led her to recognise the subversive quality in her work. She describes her pieces as intimate architectures and questions whether the subversive quality of her work is due to while seeing what everyone else sees, is she asking a different question?

The third and final workshop – Subversive Ceramics with Carole Windham –  takes place this Saturday 8 February. There are three tickets left so come along if you can!

Lindsey Smith, Freelance Artist, Educator and Project Manager

Subversive Ceramics workshop

£20

Ceramics workshop with Carole Windham 10-4pm Art Room

Meet maker Carole Windham and get hands on as you learn ceramic drawing and decorative techniques such as sgraffito, incising and applied decoration. All work will be returned fired for you to keep.