Our Unfathomable Depths was an exhibition at Summerhall in Edinburgh that considered our relationship to coral.*
The work was made during the pandemic lockdowns, the first of which coincided with a mass coral bleaching event. Corals are often seen to be a bellwether species for collapsing ecosystems, but they are not only symbols of the climate crisis, corals are dynamic creatures that resist every form of human categorization. Despite this, their remoteness can lead us to relate to them more as objects than as living beings. In domestic spheres, corals exist as decorative objects, mementos, talismans, or through their representations in books. Drawing on these printed and physical references, the exhibition explores coral through the medium of lithography. This medium, which references the history of scientific illustration, also relies on the use of ever-dwindling supplies of lithographic limestone – a material that is itself not unlike the skeletons of corals.
*Because the exhibition unfortunately closed early due to the spread of the Omicron variant, I have tried to give as full a representation of it online as possible. Text from labels included in the exhibition has been italicized.
30% of all sales from this exhibition were donated to the Marine Conservation Society – a UK-based charity dedicated to protecting our seas, shores and wildlife, and also a member of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
Drawings of objects from images in online marketplaces and in books, as well as from actual objects.
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Wall text: Coral has fascinated people throughout the millennia. We have made it a subject of our myths, worn it to ward off the evil eye, and used it to reverse the effects of poison. It has been animal, vegetable, and mineral, and always precious and mysterious and sought after. Perhaps the most stunning transformation has been the shift in our conception of coral as a huge and frightening destroyer of ships to a vulnerable and delicate community of organisms that acts as a bellwether for the climate and biodiversity crises. In 2020, as human society shut down because of a climate crisis-induced zoonotic illness, a mass coral bleaching event began, the third in only five years. This exhibition considers coral from the perspective of the home – coral as creatures that we read about, and objects that we collect and treasure, as well as the deep sea reefs that live, unbeknown to most of us, off the shores of Scotland.
These printing stones are much smaller than is commonly used for lithography, as normally the stone should be larger than the paper being printed on. These were bits of broken stones that were intended to be thrown away, but instead have been reused to print many of the images in the exhibition. On some of the prints that come from these stones, the edges of the stone are visible on the paper as slight folds or there are embossed areas where the paper has been pressed into a chip on a stone’s surface. These imprints are due to the small size of the stones being used, an artefact of the process of making using imperfect materials.
Stone lithography prints, showing various stages of the printing process. During this process, strong acid was used on the image and resulted in the deletion of parts of the image. The acidification of the calcium-carbonate lithography stone reflects the effects of ocean acidification on calcium-carbonate coral skeletons.
On the plinth in the background is the stone the images were printed from, with the image on the printing surface still lightly visible but entirely unprintable.
Still from a video depicting the gradual destruction of the printing stone used to make Acid, Calcium Carbonate, and the Disappearance of the Unseen. You can watch the film below.
Lithography is a printmaking technique that relies on the mutual repulsion of oil and water. This film demonstrates a little of how a print is made (and destroyed). As you watch, you will see the image that is displayed on the opposite wall being printed. The image drawn on the stone (displayed on the plinth) is of a piece of Lophelia pertusa, the most common type of deep-water reef-building coral, and a creature that lives in UK coastal waters. The skeleton of this type of coral, which constitutes the reef or mound that the coral forms, is made of calcium carbonate, which is not chemically so different from lithographic limestone, or, indeed, your own bones. Throughout the video you will see acid, normally used in processing lithographic images into the stone, used on the image at greater concentrations than the image can sustain. The simple art of printmaking cannot replicate the destruction of a life or a species, it can only hint at it. Imagine the smallest, weakest point on a branch of a coral reef. That is the part that will break off first as ocean acidity rises, as is reflected by the disappearing branches in the succession of images.
A short film showing the making of the series of prints Acid, Calcium Carbonate, and the Disappearance of the Unseen.
Lithography (from Ancient Greek λίθος, lithos ‘stone’, and γράφειν, graphein ‘to write’) is the art of printing from stone. The stones used in this process are slabs of Jurassic limestone from the Solnhofen region of Bavaria, geologically known as the Altmühltal Formation. The stone was formed as coral reefs grew up in the Tethys Sea and restricted the flow of water inland, creating isolated lagoons where salinity rose to levels that were too high for most living things. Creatures who made their way into the lagoons in one way or another were left undisturbed by scavengers when they died. In their calm and anoxic resting places they petrified along with the silt sands of the lagoon into fossils delicate enough to record insect wings, feathers, or the soft bodies of jellyfish.
In the late 1700s, the cost of copper used to make printing matrices encouraged innovation and a search for alternate materials for producing prints. The dense and pure limestone which was then abundant in the Altmühl Valley was discovered to be the perfect vessel for a process of chemical printing based on the tendency of oil and water to repel each other. Images were drawn onto the surface of the stones with fatty materials, then the water-based resin gum arabic was mixed with saltpetre (nitric acid), which caused the traces of the fatty drawing materials to be absorbed into the stone so that, when wetted, the stone would be receptive to oil-based inks for printing.
During the century following this discovery, limestone was extensively quarried in the region. Global demand for printing stones encouraged exploration of limestone deposits further afield, but Solnhofen limestone’s density and the characteristic large slabs of thick and consistent stone meant that Bavaria was the main source of lithographic limestone. By the early 1900s, deposits of limestone judged to be of a high enough quality to be considered ‘lithographic standard’ were almost entirely exhausted, though the shift to using metal plates for commercial printmaking, as is still the case today, meant this was not a disaster for the printing industry.
Lithography on stone exists today as the legacy of this brief period in the history of publishing and extraction. The stones that artists use currently are the remnants of publishing innovation and environmental plunder. Millions of years old, these stones have, in more recent years, weathered time in artists’ studios, publishing-house basements, as well as being repurposed as paving or building stones. Images can be placed into the stone and removed from them. As the stone is worn down through use, sometimes fossils are found. Working on the stone can feel like a meditation on deep time, depletion, and creation. The stones themselves can be understood as a co-creation of the corals who formed the lagoons, the calcium carbonate of the limestone referencing the skeletons of these coral collaborators in the lithographic process.
Multi-layer stone lithography monoprints on manilla hemp paper.
In September 2021, a call-out was made asking people to lend any coral or coral-related objects that they had at home to this exhibition. My hope in inviting these contributions was to offer an opportunity to explore why we have these objects, what we feel about them, and what it says about our relationships with our environment. The responses that people sent in revealed a love of coral objects and deeply personal meanings and associations, while also often simultaneously showing a deep discomfort with having and owning coral objects. Beside the corals were labels with descriptions of the objects from the people who submitted them, some of whom chose to be named and some of whom opted to remain anonymous.
The objects ranged from pieces of jewelry, fossil coral specimens, corals collected on beaches, things that looked like coral, books about coral, amulets, ground coral to be used as pigment, and many more things besides.
Coral-like Automatic Writing Machine
(smaller object)
Also to be used for labelling in annotated drawings. Lithographic limestone.
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Mother of Coral-like Automatic Writing and Annotating Machine
(larger object)
Coarser limestone prototype, unsuitable for printing.
(see image above and below)
Spread before the two above prints are the two coral collections the prints were based on.
Before ever having met, two people who are now friends went individually to the same small island in the South-Pacific on holidays. Each person collected corals on the beach and brought them back in their luggage, only learning of this coincidence later.
Still from video displayed during the exhibition courtesy of Prof J Murray Roberts (University of Edinburgh). Changing Oceans Expedition 2012 (RRS James Cook cruise 073) sponsored by UK Ocean Acidification programme (NERC, DECC, Defra).
Logachev Mounds and Pisces Site – Rockall Bank
Though relatively unknown compared with tropical corals, deep-water corals are widely-distributed globally and are stunningly biologically diverse. Some of these corals can be found just off the western and northern coasts of Scotland, with the closest that we know of being in the Mingulay Reef Complex, just 13km off the coast of Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides. Rockall Bank (where the Logachev Mounds and Pisces Site shown in the video are located) is approximately 370km west of the Outer Hebrides.
Deep-sea corals can live at depths ranging from 50m to as much as 3,000m. At such depths, the corals live in dark waters, meaning that, unlike tropical corals, they are not able to live in symbiotic arrangements with photosynthesizing algae. Like shallow-water corals, some deep-water corals form reefs or ‘mounds’ which provide shelter allowing a vast diversity of life to thrive, and also provide important breeding grounds for many types of fish. Unfortunately, this makes these areas particularly attractive as fishing grounds. One of the main threats to deep-water reefs is trawling which can, in an instant, completely destroy thousands of years of reef habitat. Oil and gas exploration, as well as deep-sea mining, also similarly threaten deep-water corals.
Ocean acidification, where increasing levels of carbon dioxide being absorbed by oceans increases their acidity levels, is a further threat to deep-water corals. The waters they live in are already acidic, less saturated with the calcium carbonate necessary to create their skeletons. As a result, their growth rates are considerably slower than even that of tropical corals – deep sea corals reefs may grow only 10mm per year, meaning that the reefs we know about are thousands of years old.
Two paintings of hippopotamuses as an ornamental species.
‘Ippopotamo (Cavallo marino) a Boboli di Firenze’
egg tempera on board
25 x 35 cm
‘Hippopotamuses of the Magdalena River — Northern Colombia’
egg tempera on board
40 x 65 cm
Lithographische Kabinett
Eichstätt, Germany
December 2018
This project considered citrus as a commodity ranging across time and international lines. Beginning with research in Italy, the project was further developed in Scotland before being completed in Germany.
Because the gallery of the Lithographische Kabinett also doubles as a print studio, it was possible to exhibit the artistic process itself as much as the finished work. Stone printing matrices were displayed alongside finished prints, and for part of the exhibition the public was invited into the studio to experience both the exhibition as well as the process of making the exhibition.
Art historian Gernot Lorenz discussing the work at the opening of the exhibition.
Artist talk during a day when the public was welcome to spend time in the studio while drawing, processing, and printing of stones was happening.
Lithograph
76 cm x 56 cm
Stone lithography
39.5 cm x 50 cm
Commissioned by Lithographie-Werkstatt Eichstätt for the Jahresdruck 2018.
Stone lithography
39.5 cm x 50 cm
Stone lithography
39.5 cm x 50 cm
Printing in the gallery.
Stone lithography and monoprint
54 cm x 77 cm
Stone lithography
54 cm x 77 cm
Mezzotint
20 cm x 30 cm
Mezzotint
20 cm x 30 cm
Stone lithography on silk
Stone Lithography
30 cm x 70 cm
Stone Lithography and Monoprint
35.5 cm x 71 cm
Lithography stone that had been used for printing alongside another stone with initial sketch in red chalk. The second stone was fully drawn and printed during the course of the exhibition.
Stone Lithography
33 cm x 25 cm
Printed and drawn during the exhibition.
Lithographic stone objects and incidental stone lithography prints on newsprint. The lithographic stones were collected in a local (abandoned) quarry in Solnhofen where fine lithographic stones were historically quarried.
Stone Lithography
75 cm x 65 cm
Artist textile as part of interactive installation.
This installation was the outcome of an art-science collaboration focused on mangroves and coastal environments. The project and subsequent exhibition was arranged through the international Pint of Science festival and the University of Glasgow.
Installation of work on the subject of Homo efflorescens. Prints and sculptural objects made of hair, plaster, and living plants.
~September 2016.
Plaster and egg tempera
25 cm tall
To see page-by-page images of the book go here.
Stone lithograph
52 x 36 cm
Zea mays ssp. mays
Wrapped in lithographed end papers from 'Homo Efflorescens: Their Species, Customs, and Character.'
Beside the corn an engraved steel plaque reads:
Sweetcorn F1 ‘Earlygold’ (Zea mays ssp. mays)
Origin: Amazon Marketplace
Sweet corn, the fat-eared, bearded relative of the wild grass teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) is a species completely reliant on humans for both its creation and subsistence. According to Arturo Warman, Mexico’s Secretariat of Agrarian Reform from 1994–1999, corn ‘occupies a position comparable to that of human beings in the animal kingdom. The analogy is appropriate, because corn is clearly the offspring of humans, a gradual and impressive product of human intervention, much closer to them, in a certain sense, than to any other living beings’, and accordingly corn is ‘a human offspring, our plant kin’. Corn’s intimate, symbiotic relationship with humanity has for thousands of years provided the nutritive foundations of ever-expanding empires. Corn is intimately connected to systems of control and capitalism and has played an essential role in supporting colonisation, industrialisation, and globalisation.
Dicksonia antarctica
(The Dicksonia antarctica is wrapped in lithographed end papers of 'Homo Efflorescens: Their Species, Customs, and Character.' and displayed beside a nail and intact identification tag reading "Victoria The Place To Be - Department of Sustainability and Environment - FLORA AND FAUNA GUARANTEE ACT 1988 - 1911310 - 1911319 - This tag must be fixed to the tree-fern or grass-tree at the time the plant is harvested in Victoria of imported to Victoria. The tag must be cut in two at the point of retail sale, so that it cannot be re-used. The last buyer of the plant may then remove the remains of the tag.")
Beside the tree fern an engraved steel plaque reads:
Tasmanian Tree Fern (Dicksonia antarctica)
Origin: Amazon Marketplace
Dicksonia antarctica is one of the more ancient species of tree fern dating back to at least the Jurassic or Cretaceous periods. Remarkable for its ginger tresses and impressive stature, this plant finds its natural habitat in wet sclerophyll forests and high-altitude cloud forests where its roots form an important habitat for the endangered Narracan burrowing crayfish (Engaeus phyllocerus). The tree derives its name from Scottish nurseryman and plant collector James Dickson (1738–1822), friend of explorer and botanist Joseph Banks. Exotic tree ferns serve no real economic purpose, though during the ‘Fern Craze’ of the high Victorian times they were considered to be an important status symbol among the wealthy classes of Europe and North America. Fern hunters were employed to harvest these plants from the wild and transport them to the homes of their wealthy patrons, a practice which persists to some degree to the present day. Currently tree ferns are strictly controlled by governmental authorities and required to be sold with a label indicating that they have been sustainably harvested from old-growth forest areas about to undergo a significant land-use change. This transformation usually entails clear-fell logging and conversion from native forest to plantation.
A book of lithographs.
