The Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) commission to celebrate their 125th anniversary of science on Helgoland, Germany was successfully installed in the Bluehouse Museum building on May 17th and unveiled before an invited audience of scientists, civil servants and politicians on May 19th. All a bit strange for me but a chance to talk to some very interesting and well informed scientists about climate change as it affects the oceans.
The commission asked me to take inspiration from the North Sea as a habitat, an ecosystem, a landscape, a place of scientific field enquiry and a space of human habitation. That's a complex mix which I had to weave together into a cohesive whole. The elliptical shape was my way of expressing the sense of interconnected wholeness which I believe is the reality of this 'place'. The 13 panels, apart from being a practical way of shipping the 3m x 2m work from Garrigill to Helgoland, stood for the puzzle that scientists sometimes talk about in their collaborative work. One conversation with a plankton ecologist about gaps in knowledge and the nature of error led to a series of square holes where pieces don't quite fit together and through which you can see the support structure behind the surface of the panels- a reminder perhaps of other realities behind surface appearances
The various images, both collaged laser prints and painted areas were built up in layers over several months and came from a number of different scientists who I interviewed and worked alongside at various times at AWI Helgoland and on board the RV Polarstern icebreaker over the previous 15 months.
The painting will be dismantled when the builders go in to turn the current empty shell into the new Bluehouse Museum of the ocean. It will be re-instsalled next to the main entrance to the research offices and laboratories inside a new covered area joining the museum to the labs.
Here are a few pictures of the completed work.
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| Support structure built and ready to hang in the Bluehouse Museum |
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| Panels partly erected in precise sequence with 2mm gaps between pieces. |
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Ready for unveiling at the 125th birthday ceremony
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Unveiled at the birthday reception in the future Bluehouse Museum
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| Questions from Prof. Peter Lemke and Prof. Karen Wiltshire |
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| Life goes on as usual for the Gannets on Helgolands cliffs. |
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| My 3rd farewell to Helgoland |
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