SONG TIDES
2020- ongoing.
Song Tides project is inspired by swimming in the sea and an idea to create interactive sculptural monuments rusted by the sea, highlighting people's changing relationships and connection to the sea over time.
Submerged steel bars cut at 3.7 metres high (Cromarty tidal range) are submerged and removed and installed to site-specific locations on the Summer, Winter Solstices, and Spring and Autumn Equinoxes.
The cut-off tester pieces of steel were documented using underwater cameras and displayed as an installation with Black Isle collectives over the summer of 2020.
The project evolved and steel bars were created into a bell shape and displayed in the exhibition that is part of the Liminal Zone project that toured Scottish education institutions 2021-22. An audio collage of collected sea audio with human accompaniment was displayed with it.
The Tidalspiral sculpture is a 3.7-meter length of steel that was twisted into a Fibonacci-shaped spiral and spent the winter lockdown months in the tidal range of the firth. It was later hung from the rafters as part of the Terrafabulations exhibition at Creative Academy Inverness. Audiences were invited to paint it with seawater, which made the surface of the metal continue to change whilst being exhibited.
Headdress spiral made at a residency at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop 2022 had words that referenced the sea from the ancient Cromarty dialect, welded inside the rims. Sea swimmers wore them on the beach celebration of the summer solstice 2022. Other spiral headdresses representing other times of the year are in progress. The winter solstice headdresses have the words Dochas over the imaginative area of the head, which is the Gaelic word for Hope and inside the rims are embossed drawings of marine life seen whilst swimming at the HopeSpot artist's snorkelling residency in Argyl 2022.
Work in progress hopes to create interactive sculptural monuments, rusted by the sea and that highlight the connection and the mutual importance of protecting marine life.
