4 minute read
Spirit Tables
By Michael Visocchi
Michael Visocchi is an artist and maker based in Angus, Scotland. His work is about geology, habitat and the human trace left on landscape. He creates work in a variety of materials including wood, metal, card, thread, rope and resin.
After a year-long search, the South Georgia Heritage Trust and the Government of South Georgia have announced the winner of an international artistic commission designed to highlight the environmental recovery of the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, a UK Overseas Territory in the Southern Ocean. The idea of the commission was to challenge artists to find a way to tell the conservation messages of South Georgia, an island that was at the centre of the whaling industry for decades, but is now an ecosystem in recovery. The winning artist is Scottish sculptor Michael Visocchi, with a work called ‘Commensalis – the Spirit Tables of South Georgia’. This site-specific piece will be situated on South Georgia at the Grytviken Whaling Station, with Michael’s concept drawing inspiration from a number of sources to tell the island’s powerful story. Grytviken is the only visitor-accessible whaling station on South Georgia, and receives around 10,000 visitors per year under usual circumstances. Michael’s artwork will also be part of an outreach programme in the UK (currently under development), which may see Spirit Tables placed in a number of locations to engage a wider number of people in the story of South Georgia. Michael Visocchi outlines his vision.
Michael Visocchi
© Adam Proctor
My concept for the artwork was inspired by the site-specific nature of the brief, something you don’t often see specified all that often in commission call outs to artists. I’ve always liked working with the idea of site specificness in mind.
We had a wonderful tutor at art school who always insisted that the site is half the artwork. Those were such wise words because they place the artist’s ego firmly behind the importance of the site and the story. Only then can you engage meaningfully with what’s actually in front of you. I actually think that in this instance (at Grytviken) the site is so charged that it is actually more than half the artwork.
My work has always tried to express, in poetic terms, human interaction with the landscape, particularly the trace left by human beings on our landscapes, for good or for bad. So I was excited by the idea of using the industrial landscape of the former whaling station at Grytviken on South Georgia as the context and cornerstone for this proposal.
Commensalis composite
© Adam Proctor
I grew up in a relatively rural part of Scotland, and my friends and I would sometimes play in and around old disused farm sheds. Strange old machines and rusty corrugated sheeting were all part of my formative environment. I always used to find my imagination could run riot in these places, wondering what these old sites and contraptions would have once been used for. Their stasis, abandonment and scale were even more intriguing. They were like ruins and had a mysterious quality to them. When I first saw the images of the whaling station at Grytviken, it brought lots of memories back to me. It seemed very familiar, despite the fact that I’d never visited it, or indeed any whaling station for that matter.
Grytviken
© George Lemann
Blue whale hauled up on its ventral side, 1928-1929.
© discoveryinvestigations.ac.uk
When I started researching the site and landscape at Grytviken I was struck by a number of ideas. In particular the visual connection, and formal similarities, between the barnacles found growing on the flanks and dorsal areas of whales and the steel rivets used in the vessels and buildings which made up the site. In essence this is a story about numbers – whale numbers taken and whale numbers recovered – so managing to identify and isolate a visual unit which could convey one whale threw many possibilities in front of me. Thus, visually and formally, my artwork will make this connection between the barnacles and the rivets.
Washed up shipping vessel at Grytviken.
© Stephen Bolsco
At the heart of the Flensing Plan, (the part of the whaling station where carcasses were processed) and consisting of six tables representing the six different whale species that were hunted and processed there, are the ‘Spirit Tables.’ They are punctuated by stainless steel button head rivets in various patterns, with each rivet symbolising a live whale or the spirit of a live whale, each pattern referring to a particular part of that whale’s natural history. Each rivet is approximately the size of a snooker ball sliced in half.
Commensalis
© Adam Proctor
En masse, these rivets will essentially create large reflective surfaces that will mirror the sky, the sun, the moon and the mountains. I fully expect The Spirit Tables to be seen shimmering from far out in the harbour and from the higher ground around the bay. They will change in different lighting conditions, illuminate the space and radiate a feeling of hope. Interestingly, they will also reflect the viewer, reminding us that we are implicated in this story, and that we, humankind, are central to environmental recovery.
Whale on South Georgia, 9 January 1927.
© discoveryinvestigations.ac.uk
Sunset from Grytviken
© Jerome Viard
Click here to watch a short film of Michael Visocchi talking about the concepts that have informed his artwork
http://www.sght.org/news/artistic-commission-winner-announced/
