Disappearing Walks

An exhibition of the art of Annabel Ralphs

Rotunda Exhibition 9th – 30th June 2011

                             
This exhibition is being mounted as part of ‘Maritime Lyme 2011’ and will complement the museum’s maritime walks week also being held in June.

Artist’s Statement:
‘Measures of geological time and tidal time are central to my work, a series of tidal drawings and other documentation, soundings and experiments started in the linear laboratory of the Jurassic coastline and continued in my studio, approximately 132 miles from the sea. The tides not only form the coastline over geological timescales but also alter our access to it from hour to hour and month to month.

My ideas evolve through repeated visits to the Dorset coast, but also by displacement, not being there. Contrasting sites where accessibility is, or has been determined by geological and tidal forces alters our perception of time and place.’

                                                                                                                                 "Tide measurer"

   "Coastal defence"

The exhibition's phenomenological approach to drawing and materials was inspired in part by a quote and illustration found in an exhibition celebrating Mary Anning in Oxford University Museum (including objects on loan from Lyme Regis Museum):

'Drawing with sepia from the ink sac of the contemporary cuttlefish, sepia officinalis, was already common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the novelty of fossil sepia meant that it was particularly used in drawing fossils. In both cases the ink sacs were dried and ground to a fine powder before being mixed with water and shellac.'

The drawing above was made by Elizabeth Philpot, and shows one of the plesiosaurs discovered by Mary Anning. Her use of fossil sepia ink is recorded in a letter she wrote in 1833 (transcribed below), which includes some interesting details about Mary Anning.

Where Elizabeth Philpot used fossil sepia to draw fossils, Annabel Ralphs has used particular materials to trace the decaying wooden pilings surrounding West Bay:

• Blue Lias, collected from Charmouth; the blue-grey colour is caused by its iron content.
• Silver Point, suggested by drawing with a ring found on a cliff walk at Tyneham.
• Oak Gall Ink which, similar to silver point, darkens over time through oxidization.