This sculptural commission for the Harry and Margery Boswell Collection of Scottish Contemporary Art at University of St Andrews grew out of a year long research residency with the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
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This sculptural commission for the Harry and Margery Boswell Collection of Scottish Contemporary Art at University of St Andrews grew out of a year long research residency with the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. The piece was inspired by research across the department, as well as geo-walks around coastal St Andrews where encounters with local trace fossils, conversations with researchers about ocean change and its impact on growth processes, questions about what constitutes life within planetary geology, and looking deep inside the earth at diamondiferous landmass all found their way into the work.
Chaos Terrain is an astro-geological term for the enmeshed features of a topographical landscape. The piece incorporates Scottish Ledmore marble salvaged from a fireplace in a former hall of residence at the University. Ledmore marble is one of the only Scottish marbles in existence, formed of ancient carbonate life approximately 500 million years old. Currently, the Ledmore Marble quarry only processes this unique and soon extinct seam of marble through crushing it into aggregate for use in peoples gardens and driveways – a disposable resource with a life history much longer than any of the people whose driveways it will line. As a side note – I have now become the founding member of a largely poetic group – The Scottish Marble Preservation Society.
But – to return to the piece – the marble was laser-engraved with drawings inspired by trace fossils and fossilised remains of past life forms encountered in the vicinity of St Andrews. We filled the lines with ink composed of a pulverised core sample of soil from James Hutton’s farm. We ground the soil into powder in a geology lab. The work also includes coral grown in an aquarium in the Oceans Institute, before it went on a five month residency to the Fontaines Pétrifiantes de Saint Nectaire, the calcifying caves in France, where it rapidly encrusted in a new limestone deposit.
We hope that Chaos Terrain helps us understand how we can both preserve past life species and encourage future care in turn.