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Three Gorges, After the Dam 2 The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river in China is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It stretches nearly a mile across and towers 575 feet above the world's third longest river. Its reservoir stretches over 350 miles upstream and forced the displacement of close to 1.9 million people. Construction began in 1994 and was scheduled to take 20 years and over $24 billion to complete. The controversial project has already had immense environmental impact. The Willow Pattern was designed in Stoke on Trent for industrial mass production. It represents an archetypal English view of the oriental, and the exotic; originally alluding to the expensive, hand-painted landscapes on imported Chinese porcelain.

It seemed an appropriate image to use in a work, which concerns the drowning of vast tracts of Chinese landscape, for dubious economic and environmental benefit.

The work uses a digitally altered willow print (from a porcelain factory copperplate archive in Sweden) other extracted images from the willow, to allude to the Chinese, whilst effectively erasing most of the pattern and decorative design by suggesting the floodwaters of the Three Gorges Dam. This is an update, second Three Gorges print/plate and features one of the tourist boats that now ply their trade across the new lake.

The Hartlepool Ghost Ships In 2004 Able UK won an ÂŁ11m contract to break and recycle 13 US vessels at its Hartlepool yard. It had not however gained the necessary planning permission for the dismantling facilities before the first ships left the US. The Caloosahatchee, Canopus, Compass Island and Canisteo were the first four old supply ships from the defunct US naval fleet, to arrive at Hartlepool in 2005.

Nicknamed the ghost ships, they are said to contain a cocktail of industrial pollutants, and environmental groups on both sides of the Atlantic, have claimed the vessels should have been dismantled in their home country.

English Nature objected to a planning application by Able UK for the creation of a specialist dry dock to enable dismantling, as it believed the development would harm internationally protected wildlife sites.

Others pointed out that Hartlepool has its own a nuclear power station, and is surrounded by one of the biggest chemical complexes in Europe, and that both these industries have to deal with some of the most dangerous toxic and nuclear elements known to man‌ Since arriving in the UK, the ships remained untouched moored in Hartlepool, as Able continued its fight to gain planning permission which was eventually granted in 2008.

The Cumbrian Blue(s) Ghost Ship plate commemorates the arrival of Canisteo in 2004, and the subsequent controversy about its presence in Hartlepool.

Paul Scott