Works and artefacts from the UK coastline Time and Tide Bell Project are to go on display until 16 October at Artizan Collective Gallery.
The project, which was first conceived in 2008 by artist, sculptor and bell-maker Marcus Vergette, now includes seven completed and six in progress bells along the UK coastline with one destined soon for Brixham.
The bells are public artworks, gifted to reinforce connections in local communities, between different parts of the country, between the land and the sea, and between ourselves and our environment.
As part of Devon Open Studios this September, castings from the project will be supported by a curated exhibition of works by climate artists in Artizan Collective Gallery’s Above and Below exhibition.
The exhibited artworks, responding to themes of interconnectedness, coastal communities, our fragile work, and floods, ruins, and erosion, call communities to action in a collective response to the threats facing our coastlines and wider environment.
An example of one of the coastal bells will be on display.
The bells toll at high tides, as a reminder of the material and intangible relationships we have with each other and the world around us, and in doing so draw our attention to the fragility of our environment and the impact we inevitably have through our irrevocable connection to it.
Alongside this are works from 18 other artists including the installation ‘A Walk Through the Submarine Forest’ by Jan Allison Edwards which takes 250 moulded seaweed forms cast from marine waste ranging from bottle caps to traffic cones and creates in immersive piece in suspension that captures the ‘invasive species’ that pollutes our waters. Visitors can ‘take a walk’ through the work.
The exhibition is in association with the Time and Tide Bell project and in partnership with Prof Corinna Wagner from the University of Exeter, with support from the UK Climate Resilience Programme and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).