The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Artist’s sculpture to tell island story
Aleading Tayside artist has won an in terna t iona l competition to highlight conser vation work on a sub-Antarctic island.
The Dundee-based South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) has spent the last year searching for someone to reflect the environmental recovery of South Georgia, a UK overseas territory in the Southern Ocean.
The island is the former centre of the global whaling industry but its shift from exploitation to conservation is at the forefront of the new artwork by sculptor Michael Visocchi, from Kirriemuir.
Dundee’s links to the whaling industry date back centuries, as explorers embarked on Arctic expeditions in city- built ships.
Mr Visocchi’s concept piece, called Commensalis – the Spirit Tables of South Georgia, will be housed on the island at the Grytviken Whaling Station, drawing inspiration from a number of sources to tell the island’s powerful story.
Mr Visocchi said: ‘This is an enormous honour and an extraordinary opportunity to engage creatively with such an important story in a truly remarkable place.
“It is going to be a real privilege to work alongside the many skilled and dedicated people who are so deeply invested in South Georgia and its wildlife.
“It is very rare for an art ist to have the opportunity to respond to and work in such a genuinely special place and with such a deeply emotive subject matter.”
The SGHT has been working on the island in close partnership with the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands since 2005.
Seabird numbers were devastated for two centuries as a result of the rodents brought to the island on sealing and whaling vessels but the trust’s habitat restoration project has reversed the damage and millions of birds reclaimed their ancestral home when South Georgia was declared rodent-free in May 2018 after the largest invasive species eradication in the world.
Alison Neil, chief executive of SGHT, said: “The competition was tough but the entire judging panel was impressed by the level of research Michael had undertaken and were struck by how his concept so effectively captured the essence of the brief, which was to shine a light of hope on to what can often seem a bleak future for our environment.”