LITTORAL - Marks from the margins

I and a group of artists, most of whom have recently graduated from the School of Creative Arts at the University of the West of England have now started to work towards this show at the Create Centre in Bristol. The Create Centre works with enviromental issues, and therefore this show feels both important, timely and challenging.Thanks to Anna Harley’s iniatative, Littoral has become a reality.

Many of our group now work locally from Spike Island Studios. We are united through our concern with an internal and external response to landscape. Our works reflect a broad range of print and other applied art processes, both traditional and contemporary in character.

The group aim is to explore the role of contemporary print and applied art within the Northern European Landscape Tradition, with a unifying theme of the littoral zone. The term, ‘littoral’ refers to the margin of land between the low and high tide mark that is characteristic of tidal areas, such as the local landscape of the Severn Estuary, with its dramatic tidal flows. Our individual and unique responses to this continually changing environment are expressed in diverse and innovative approaches to print and mark making.

Each artist taking part will produce a collection of work, in preparation for a group exhibition, in response to the theme of the Littoral.This group collection of work calls for an exhibition space that is itself located near the shoreline. The situation of the Create Centre, by one of the most dramatic tidal ranges in the world, makes this Gallery location particularly relevant to our theme.

In physical terms, the littoral zone is the area of land that extends from the high water mark at the edge of a body of water, to the shoreline areas that are often submerged. The adjacency of water gives a number of distinctive characteristics to littoral regions. Water’s erosive power results in particular types of landforms, such as sand dunes, and estuaries. The natural movement of the littoral along the coast is called the littoral drift.

Conceptually, the littoral zone can be taken to mean the areas of our psyche that are most often hidden from view - only surfacing at times of extremes. The transient nature of this marginal area and its continual state of flux, acts as a rich source of symbolism for our imagery. The twice daily tidal flow of water is a metaphor often used to explore the passing of time, that acts as a marker of our human frailty (time and tide wait for no man) and the endless repetitions in life (constant ebb and flow of life). As with water, the erosive power of time and our life experiences form us; our personalities, self- esteem, psychological profiles, physical strength and stamina and life choices.