Joseph Calleja Robert Callender David Cass
57°53’45.0”S 174°50’21.0”E
From Joseph Calleja’s Antipode project, the image opposite is a satellite view of the gallery’s exact opposite location on the globe
Ullapool 20 July—8th September 2019 th
Foreword
Cass writes of Callender:
What relation does the coastline have to the ocean? It is a place for looking out from, it is an edge, it is a dividing line between different elements, or a meeting place for those different elements. Ideas of how the coastline and ocean relate to each other give play to a wealth of responses in this exhibition created particularly for Ullapool.
This tidal place of meeting and overlap is for An Talla Solais one way of looking at artistic collaboration, where familiar elements might be cast in a new context and allowed to surprise or unsettle, or might create through unexpected alchemy a new dimension altogether.
As Coastline is to Ocean is a project that has made its own voyage to arrive on our north-western shores. David Cass made work for An Talla Solais’ 2013 exhibition Travelling Light which toyed with the theme of the sailor’s ditty box. Joseph Calleja was selected for a 2018 residency at An Talla Solais through our annual award at the Royal Scottish Academy’s summer open exhibition. With the encouragement of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Creative Scotland we have been exploring ways of working between artists, and between artists and curators. We were therefore immediately interested when Calleja planted the idea of a new collaborative project involving not only his longstanding colleague Cass, but also the work of Robert Callender (1932–2011) whose contemplation of Scotland’s shoreline brings an alternative dynamic into the mix.
‘That margin – the narrow slip between low and high tide – occupied almost the entirety of artist Robert Callender’s career. The zone where wash and shingle pools, a gathering point for the silt of life...’
Some of the questions faced by a coastal community, on the edge of land and sea, in an epoch of climate crisis are physical. What does change look like? What forces are at play? How might things unfold? But there is an existential question too. In the language of these artists, what is seemingly on the edge can, with a shift of focus, suddenly be seen to be at the heart of things. This exhibition is made for a world – our very own particular world – needing to come to terms with these questions. In its use of found and repurposed objects, its play with ideas of edges and material change, and also the energy that comes from the artistic collaboration itself, we hope this exhibition will inspire reflection on charting our own troubled waters. Joanna Wright, An Talla Solais
Shards of Zen (2013—ongoing) Joseph Calleja Horizontally stacked glass Dimensions variable
126mm Ago (2019) David Cass Found 8mm film, found wooden stretcher 240 x 330 mm
Two Perspectives
Joseph Calleja (Gozo, 1981) and David Cass (Edinburgh, 1988) are connected by an enthusiasm for working with found materials. The two have maintained a creative dialogue over the past decade – since sharing studios whilst studying at Edinburgh College of Art – coming together now with As Coastline is to Ocean. This project departs from their current individual practices. Their aim here is to present two perspectives on one topic. Over the last few years Cass’ work has become increasingly concerned with environmental issues related to water. From explorative works created in drought-zones, to illustrative projects focussed on flooding. His current works refer to rising sea levels, and in this exhibition Cass is looking specifically at coastal change. The coastline is one of the first casualties of rising seas. In Scotland, we may think of sea rise as an issue lapping at the feet of others – a far off, foreign concern – but this phenomenon will soon become local to us all. Oceanographer John Englander states ‘while many may think of the Maldives or Miami in
Cross Section (c.1980) Robert Callender Card, wooden frame, paint 1220 x 610 mm
terms of vulnerability, flooding will also eat away at the coast of Scotland. The stunning reality of rising sea level is that all coastal communities will be affected.’ Calleja takes a more anthropological approach to the project. His experience in Japan during the Robert Callender Residency afforded him the opportunity to ponder upon a particular aspect of Callender’s work: the interdependence and links between the appearance of objects and their essence. Through his research he explored the work of Bertrand Lavier, and in particular his piece Piano – in which the artist painted a pianoforte with impasto technique – depicting the same piano directly underneath thick layers of paint. During a recent An Talla Solais residency, Calleja worked on the series Imċaqlaq. This set of works that would be pertinent to the curatorial concept of the exhibition, not just because they deal with the found object but also because they heighten the importance of the peripheral in art.
We started on a simple footing for this exhibition, picking the topic of coasts and coastlines principally because of Ullapool’s location, but also – as artists drawn to water – we wanted to mark Scotland’s Year of Coasts & Waters (2020). We took the physical coastline as our starting point, beginning illustratively but gradually evolving. Thanks to the Robert Callender Estate, we were permitted to include key artworks by the late, great, coastally-concerned artist alongside our own. Our works are just as much a response to Callender’s as they are the topic of the coast, not least in our use of found objects; a nod to
the mixed-media facsimiles that make his object-grouping Plastic Beach and the cardboard structures behind his rudders, boats and oars. Callander’s works are reformed fragments of salvaged (manmade) sea debris. Ours are repurposed splinters from unknown homes – found at flea markets, salvage depots, antique shops – saved, perhaps, from decades more damp and discolouration. Joseph Calleja & David Cass
Imċaqlaq π192.1 (2018) Joseph Calleja Re-assembled found frame, glass 500 x 300 x 175 mm
200mm Ago (2019) David Cass Found 35mm film, found frame 340 x 300 mm
Imċaqlaq π216(2018) Joseph Calleja Re-assembled found frame 450 x 380 x 190 mm
114mm Ago (2018) David Cass Found metal photographer’s plate, cast salt 280 x 225 x 35 mm
Imċaqlaq π183.8 (2018) Joseph Calleja Re-assembled found frame 554 x 248 x 80 mm
116mm Ago (2019) David Cass Found carbon-paper slips, found box base 350 x 260 mm
David Cass The atmosphere could be considered the frame of the Earth – a thermal blanket of gasses – shrouding us from space and endless universe. Zoom in to the Earth, capped on each end by ice. At the top, the Arctic, a frozen ocean ringed by land; at the bottom, the Antarctic, a massive continent of mountain chains and lakes buried under ice, circled by an ever-changing frozen ocean. Life is dictated at these extremes, these outer rings. What goes on here is crucial to all life on the planet. Antarctica and the Arctic; beyond our reach but not beyond our influence. What happens at the periphery often dictates life’s main events. Environmental change is perhaps the key happening in all of our lives today and the Arctic is considered ground zero of this change. If we were to look from another perspective, the Arctic circle boundary lies equidistant from the gallery in Ullapool, as the distance between Ullapool and London. For me, this peripheral detail enforces the personal characteristic of this exhibition. Unlike Calleja, I’m taking an environmental look at a universal coast. A crucial focus in my artwork is sea rise, and my principal inclusion in As Coastline is to Ocean is a series of artworks based on the albedo effect (in relation to ice melt). These works reference my Rising Horizon series, using proportions and divisions of surface to explore the topic of rising sea levels. In
Rising Horizon, the variable is the level of sea (versus sky) in each painted seascape. In these albedo works, the variable is the proportion of black, heat-storing sea versus diminishing ice occupying the surface. Ice- and snow-covered areas have a high albedo ratio. Our ice-covered caps reflect solar radiation which otherwise would be absorbed by (dark) oceans and cause warming. The loss of reflective ice and snow in the Arctic and Antarctic is important for the development of climate change globally. With this scientific basis in mind, I’ve constructed many of my artworks for As Coastline is to Ocean using dark and light materials, referencing the monochromatic contrast which is characteristic of the effect. Some of these works go a step further too, referencing the increased levels of salt that warmed water contains, or charting the level of fluctuation in ocean height between the time the found surface was created and the present day. The long-held view has been that the world’s seas would rise by a maximum of just under a metre by 2100, but new data suggests that seas are rising even more rapidly than this estimation. A paper published by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 20th 2019) projects that the real level may be around double that figure.
Rearrangement
In the run-up to starting work on this project I’d been gathering materials, arranging items and objects around the edges of my studio: on shelves, a dresser, draped over stacked chair backs, piled into corners. During this time, I learned I would be moving city. And so, other items came to join these gathered materials, pulled from backs of drawers, unboxed from a previous move, in readiness for impending departure. Everything began to merge around this periphery: new materials and old, new ideas and old. Unresolved artworks from 2011 now sat beside barely started studies.
so I allowed myself to experiment freely. Thanks to the fact I’ve only ever created works exploring water, the foundations of these experiments remained relevant to this upcoming show. I decided to set my paints aside and employ materials that I’d gathered in the past on a whim or with grand intentions: netting, silver leaf, sheets of corten, bundles of antique papers, roofing-slates, etching equipment, lantern slides, a cyanotype starter-pack… as well as family heirlooms, slides, ciné films, a projector.
An exhibition deadline shifts for nobody, and so work had to continue throughout this transition. I started by pulling from this outer fringe to my desk – an island in the centre of the room – working in earnest upon artworks I’d mapped out in advance. But as the days passed, I found myself spending most of my time around the outside. Arranging and combining these old and new pieces, creating playful, yet surprisingly more potent explorations than the more formal works I had intended.
The peel of materials that circled the outer edges of the room became the coastline of the studio. The frayed border of a Super-8 projection became the coastline of a long ago family film. Silver leaf applied to steel-corten became an aerial coastline thanks to the half that didn’t adhere to the rust. Crumpled turquoise carbonpaper photographed in thick morning light became dappled sea surface. 35mm films upended to display their sprocket-holes became layered waves. Pinned receipt slips became a kinetic relief of moving water.
The artist works best without restriction, and often artworks carry more spontaneity when created accidentally. It’s true also – for me, anyway – that there’s less to lose at a time of upheaval and
These artworks are objects bearing witness to what they once were – and what they’re made of – but which now rest in a new inbetween state, resembling things far outside of themselves.
Unknown Ocean
Coastline Collages (2019) David Cass Found papers, cyanotype (previous spread) Dimensions variable
Studio
David Cass
Joseph Calleja
The site plays a crucial role in my As Coastline is to Ocean series. This aspect has taken precedence throughout the making process, reshaping certain pieces and omitting other explorations. Whilst Cass has taken an environmental approach, I allude more to the notion of place, through site-specific works which rely on being firmly positioned within the gallery. Featured throughout this publication, Antipode has existed in my proposed sketches for a long time. Placed in a precise spot (coordinate) within the gallery, this work transports the audience to the exact opposite geo-location on the globe. If we were to tunnel through the Earth from this point, we would emerge almost equidistant between New Zealand and Antarctica, close to the border of the Southern Ocean, in the South Pacific. Another site-specific work – Shards of Zen – cannot be installed without constant force. This particular work interacts physically with the site, and the gallery have removed a portion of their wall to unveil a structural point to support the installation.
I have based my main responses to Callender’s work (and specifically Plastic Beach) upon the peripheral zone, incidentally, between land and sea. I say incidentally, because I am more interested in the zone than the fact that it so happens to be between land and sea. I note the fact that through observation and making art, Robert Callender raised pressing environmental issues (ahead of his time) but my work has less to do with these aspects directly and more to do with the human psyche.
Imċaqlaq examines the frame and its historical use to adorn, protect and delineate the artwork it surrounds. Looking at this periphery as a focal point, the frames I work with become the subject of the work. In this series the re-assembled glass follows suit, protecting no artwork behind it other than itself. Through an elaborate process of making, Robert Callender created a prophetic body of work. Working intuitively – using similar visual language – I hope that my inclusions channel a valid and relevant take, using materials that speak of a contemporary time.
What is this material / object / form telling me?
This inquisitive companion is constant throughout my practice. I ask it of a found object, just as I do a finished work. This is a state of being, as opposed to a process. My work as an artist is never finished, it simply treads a conversational path from one work to another, forever searching. This is true of the works presented in As Coastline is to Ocean. These works and their display have evolved drastically throughout the creation process. I find solace in the knowledge that each has been repeatedly stripped back to its foundations. A need for meditative stillness before an object lies at the heart of my artistic practice. This has enabled me to respond to my found frames in a manner where the object informs its subsequent alteration. I create linear drawings – quick responses and imaginings over the potential of an existing object – rather than designs for finished pieces.
By adapting an experimental approach, I carry this meditative state with me throughout the process of making, working in direct response to the formal and conceptual qualities of the materials in hand. Working collaboratively on As Coastline is to Ocean has injected a fresh outlook on my usually solitary practice. Now – discussing visual responses through words by way of this text – I’m given the opportunity to stand further back, bringing to mind Ronald Barthes’ The Death of the Author, in which the creator and the work are taken as unrelated. Each of my responses begin with: what is this material / object / form telling me? My job as an artist is to convey that response back to the world.
Il-Bank Tax-Xogħol The Workbench
The origins of the artworks I’m presenting here can be traced to the work and processes I witnessed from both my father and grandfather on the workbench opposite. My grandfather made this workbench for his carpentry workshop in Gozo, and my father went on to generate a legacy of work upon it. It now occupies a space in my studio. On this workbench I witnessed frames built, wood laminated, and panes of glass scored to measure. Countless stories and memories are engrained in its gouges, marks and stains. In so many ways I sense my current practice in these traces. —Joseph Calleja
Studio
Joseph Calleja
South Pacific May 2019
Previous | Rust (1989) Robert Callender Paper, card, mixed media 1220 x 1830 mm (detail)
Cracked Rudder (1989) Robert Callender Paper, card, mixed media 1220 x 610 mm
‘Callender’s subjects are pieces of driftwood and various fragments, which come away from wrecked boats, and other material found on the high tide line. At first sight his sculptures look like found objects, and might almost be interpreted as deriving from Marcel Duchamp’s provocative relocation of various functional artefacts into the world of art. In fact they are incredibly plausible-looking, three dimensional facsimiles made from paper pulp, cardboard, and paint, pigmented and given a texture using peat, saw-dust, and wood ash. Callender developed craft skills to such a degree that he produced near perfect copies, indistinguishable in the outer structure and surface from the originals.’ Plastic Beach (2003–2008) Robert Callender Paper, card, mixed media 250 (of 500) items of varied dimensions
‘The beach is where Callender imagined the reconciliation between past, present and future both metaphorically and materially. Beaches are imposing and rich frontiers, liminal places where past events, flotsam and jetsam, are pulled into the present, awaiting artists such as Callender to capture and rework. In Callender’s work this becomes not a romantic gesture but an ecological one, showing attentiveness to our material world and shared existence among other sentient and non-sentient beings that live alongside us on Earth. Political theorist Jane Bennett calls this the “cultivated, patient, sensory attentiveness to nonhuman forces” that are summoned up so effectively and intriguingly in Callender’s light and enlightened creations.’ —Andrew Patrizio
Extracts: from Contemporary Sculpture in Scotland + The Beach’s Unbearable Lightness (A2B: An Artist’s Journey)
Callender’s Zone
‘Where the picture stops … the world begins.’ —Howard Hodgkin on the frame
The above Hodgkin quote is the ideal line to pin to As Coastline is to Ocean. The exhibition takes Hodgkin’s statement and goes a step further, presenting the theory that the frame itself – both physically and metaphorically – plays a more important role than simply surrounding something. The exhibition places that exact point ‘where the picture stops’ – the no-man’s land of the frame – in the centre of our viewfinder. The area between foreshore and coastline is frame to both sea and land. That margin – the narrow slip between low and high tide – occupied almost the entirety of artist Robert Callender’s career. The zone where wash and shingle pools, a gathering point for the silt of life, but also for life. The seemingly inhospitable conditions of shoreline environments belie thriving communities of both seashore wildlife and microorganisms. Take the frayed border of a vintage film projection – like those in Cass’ Studio pages – changed and widened by a ring of dust on a lens, speckled by time, by an oxidised vignette, by mould
on the emulsion. The projection’s border acts as the transition space between the moving image and the present day. Take the film as sea and the projection-screen as land, and the fringe that divides the two becomes the zone where Callender set his gaze. The ways in which that zone changed during Callender’s lifetime have little to do with the eternal to and fro between tide and land so much as with the effect of man’s disregard for the environment. In his text The Beach’s Unbearable Lightness, Andrew Patrizio1 quotes eco-philosopher Timothy Morton2, who says of liminal (coastal) spaces ‘…as a matter of urgency, we just cannot go on thinking of [these spaces] as “in-between”. We must choose to include them on this side of human social practices, to factor them in to our political and ethical discussions.’ Patrizio writes ‘Callender brought such spaces to the forefront of his work … like many artists, he seemed attracted to marginal places and their troubling existence. In recent decades the environmental movement has highlighted, perhaps more than any other region, the edge, the borderland, in its attentiveness to change – such as low-lying, disappearing island communities or the zone where the melting polar ice-sheets meet and become the sea.’ Callender was born in Mottingham (Kent) in 1932. Readings3 from nearby Sheerness show that the sea level there was 144mm lower on his birth year compared to today. Almost forty years later, when Callender and his wife Elizabeth Ogilvie first visited the Stoer Peninsula – where they set up their re-purposed bothy – the Minch strait which met their shore was 109mm lower than today; and when the couple moved to Sea Loft in 1990 the area
of North Sea which meets the Firth of Forth lay 54mm lower. Throughout this time of dramatic sea rise – and thus, coastal topography change – another phenomenon rapidly began to alter Callender’s zone: the washing-up of ever more plastic waste. Between 1995 and 1999 Callender worked on a series titled Coastal Collection. The series comprises 500 small sculptures of beachcombed objects. These creations simulate driftwood and wooden boat parts, they speak of the correlation between the appearance of objects and their essence, which is a theme explored by Calleja throughout his practice, since participating in the Robert Callender International Residency for Young Artists in 2012. We could perhaps romanticise the pieces that make Coastal Collection, we could name these acceptable examples of flotsam and jetsam – expected forms of nautical debris. But in 2003, Coastal Collection evolved into Plastic Beach. Gone were the muted colours of salt-water washed wood and flaked ship’s paint, now replaced by the gaudy primary colours of plastic waste. In his own words, Plastic Beach is ‘for our children’s children’s children’. The project took four years to complete and was designed ‘to draw attention in a graphic way to the grave state of our coastline. The horrific assortment of plastic is quite alarming. Debris is both commercial and domestic but primarily commercial, reflecting the nature of our society’.4 Before the topic of beach waste hit the media as we see today, Callender’s piece was ahead of its time – a clear visual
representation of environmental damage. Callender’s work can be linked to the topic of global warming most clearly through the theme of excessive consumption and the dangerous over-use of petrochemical products (plastics). Furthermore, data released5 in August 2018 states that plastic waste on land – whether dumped or washed up on beaches – releases methane when exposed to sunlight. And so – in the most extreme picture – the gathered plastic that inspired Plastic Beach references one tangential cause of what one day will be the disappearance of that same beach. Seas rise as gasses warm the planet. Callender’s works are portals to a world we’ll never re-capture. They are wholeheartedly site-specific, no matter the scale. Yet, the site needn’t be the beach at Stoer, nor the strip of sand below Sea Loft. Callender’s site, his zone, exists the world over.
1 Andrew Patrizio, A2B: An Artist’s Journey, Lateral Lab 2015 Timothy Morton, Ecology Without Nature, Harvard University 2007 3 Figures obtained from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s public sea level trend charts 1900–2020 4 Robert Callender, A2B: An Artist’s Journey, Lateral Lab 2015 5 Relating to the Public Library of Science’s research article Production of methane and ethylene from plastic in the environment 2018. ‘While it was known that plastic releases carbon dioxide as it degrades, this is the first research made measuring the emissions of other greenhouse gasses.’ 2
‘Robert and his wife (artist Elizabeth Ogilvie) tested themselves against the elements during their periods spent on the remote Sutherland coast, at their lighthouse-store-turned-bothy. We endured similar tests at our Tiree home. As artists we try to be – as much as possible – self-sufficient. Robert immersed himself on the Stoer peninsula, though it would have been a real fight to persist at times. There were rewards to bearing the battles of the elements – the materials for his art (as well as the bothy furniture) would arrive in abundance in the aftermath of storms, begging to be transformed. Artist John Mooney used to say on Tiree trips that walking along a beach, gathering, was “the high art of supermarket shopping”. Cass and Calleja’s materials might not have washed up on a shoreline, but they have washed up. In this case however, the shoreline is a fleamarket stall, a car-boot sale, or maybe the sprawling muddle that is Sam Burn’s junk yard – where I first took the two as students during their second year at Edinburgh College of Art.’ —Iain Patterson, Artist
Elizabeth Ogilvie
art gives form to human feeling it is the shape that is taken by our perception of the world
Tim Ingold | Barry Lopez | Robert Callender | a.rawlings | Voltaire | Navarre Scott Momaday | Inuit saying
men talk
nature acts
in the terra incognita of our imaginations
chance openings
conscious and unconscious
trash strata
ghosts of glaciers future
uncertain future
inuksuk
continuum
spiritual correspondence an internal compass that will guide us as we decide what environmental legacy we will leave behind
future ecosystem resilience
once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon remembered earth
give form to thought
soul mind spirit acuity of the senses
listen for the ocean’s youth
ecosystem strive
spot between a progressive landscape of deep history
tactile nature of the shore peripheral zone the land is like poetry it is inexplicably coherent it is transcendent in its meaning and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life boundless space beyond mental mapping profound listening meditation
beach combing is a way of life both literally and in an abstract sense
this is an old business walking slowly over the land with an appreciation of its immediacy to the senses and in anticipation of what lies hidden in it
Antipode
Proposal Over the course of the exhibition’s installation, Cass and Calleja will each contribute to a soluble painting of sea foam upon a specific section of gallery wall. Over the course of the exhibition, the resulting painting will be gradually dissolved using atmospheric moisture, gathered then channelled by a repurposed gallery dehumidifier directly onto the painting’s surface.
Ardmair
Ullapool January 2019
Keanchulish
Ullapool December 2018
Rhue
Ullapool November 2018
Unknown Ocean
Open Call In collaboration with An Talla Solais – alongside As Coastline is to Ocean – Cass and Calleja devised and designed an Open Call to promote discussion on the subject of coastal change. The artists sought artworks which delved deeply into this globally significant environmental topic. A hundred artists applied from around the world, referencing aspects such as coastal construction, erosion, beach waste, sea rise, flooding, the acidification of sea-water…
Design © David Cass. Printed by Winter & Simpson, Dundee. Artworks © Joseph Calleja, the Estate of Robert Callender & David Cass. No artworks may be reproduced without permission. Photography © Bremner Design(Robert Callender series), Steven Gourlay (commissioned aerial photography of Ullapool’s coast), Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar (page 43), David Cass (artworks & studios: Gozo, Edinburgh, London). Unless otherwise stated, texts in this booklet have been prepared by David Cass & Joseph Calleja, with further editing by Joanna Wright. Author Andrew Patrizio is a professor of Scottish visual culture at Edinburgh University. Texts by Patrizio have been quoted with permission from Lateral Lab / the Robert Callender Estate. The Ullapool postcard featured on page 5 dates from c.1950 & was produced by (no longer operative) Valentine’s of Dundee. Photographer copyright is not stated. The postcard forms part of David Cass’ collection of ephemera. The artists wish to thank all at An Talla Solais (with special thanks to Joanna Wright, Victoria Caine & Geraldine Murray for their encouragement, enthusiasm & attention to detail throughout), artist Elizabeth Ogilvie (for her writing on page 61–62, as well as her coordination via Lateral Lab), artist Iain Patterson, Art North Magazine’s Ian McKay (for featuring the show) & to all artists associated with Coast. This not-for-profit booklet was produced in part thanks to Creative Scotland funding. The exhibition is backed by both Creative Scotland & the Hope Scott Trust. An Talla Solais is also supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Where this booklet has been sold, proceeds go purely to cover extra printing & design costs.
antallasolais.org davidcass.art josephcalleja.co.uk robertcallender.co.uk
ISBN 978-1-78972-398-4