Lines of Inquiry
The Limpetarium is a fluid art installation which is shifting, changing and developing. It is a vehicle for and manifestation of my art-based research. It does not have a fixed locale; sometimes it is situated within my art studio, at other times it's on the move, operating from a series of portable research cabinets. It is always in process, an unresolved continual cycle, much like the tide as thoughts, ideas and lines of inquiry drift in and out on the waves...
This photograph by Anne Bevan shows limpet home scars at the Bay of Skaill, Orkney, 2020
Homing Habits
Common Limpets (Patella vulgata) return from their daily food foraging excursions to the same place on the rocks. In doing so they wear away a shell shaped groove or 'home-scar' to which they fit exactly, ensuring a strong seal, securing them to the wave battered surface on which they live.
Like the limpet I too set forth, on a continuous limpeteering journey of venturing and returning, leaving my 'home scar' in search of information, connections, encounters, themes, stories and knowledge. I am transported to new and fantastic situations but always return home; my personal and family life is etched into this place.
I am strongly attached.
Filing Habits
As the fruits of these voyages accumulate they too need a home; a place where ideas, information, images, articles, objects and notes can be deposited, arranged, sorted and re-sorted. These boxes and files are becoming an archive and source material for future creative use. Opening any one of these repositories offers a glimpse into a shifting pile of concealed treasure, waiting to be explored and reworked... have a look...
Collection
The Edge of the Sea
DWELLINGS
HOME & PROTECTION
This form of creative filing was inspired by the artist Joseph Cornell, whose 'dossiers' formed the basis of his boxed assemblages.
STAITHES
A poem by Rick Sanders, written in response to his visit to The Limpetarium in 2021
This drawer contains a childhood
Salty pebbles baked hard
Fathers Arran sweater
Off white
Too large
Foraging in tide trapped pools
Unsure to flip the bigger rocks
Armed only with a netted cane
Your yellow wellies
Take you back
A midden shell stacked
Layer caked
Fossil fuel for hungry
Hunter gatherer souls
Hooks deep into your flesh
Underpinning
Playing you
At every turn
You hoard
Explore
Obsess
On conical form
Install yourself into a world
Of glacial movement
Over rock
Teeth ripping
Gouging out a path to home
Worn down by clinging on
Against the full force of it
Only humans
Make you loose your grip
In this trapped cage
A Wicker Man
All wax and dried up form
His tiny shells for eyes
Peer out across the room
There is no reason for his being
Created on a whim
Of wondering what would happen if
This piece went here
Another there
A process
Theorised
Explored
Repeated many times
Well practised
Honed
Abstracted so that I must work
To see the dedicated pattern
Embedded
Felted
Wired
Chained
Preserved beneath the bell jar
Where you flick a playful switch
To see what happens when
Contours collide
Fluid against fixed
Transient permanence
Hard shell harmonies
When I presume to think
That you have seen it all
My daughter's seashell goggles
Draw you in
The call of other stories
Yet to be shared
Collected
Archived
Put on view
Added to the mix of old and new
Perpetuating unseen force
That drives a life
To circle back
See it fresh
Each time the limpet
Leaves it's mark
Upon our weather beaten shore