THROMBOLITE: Us, 2009

 

Thrombolite: Us , 2009.
This View of Life, Evolutionary Art for the Year of Darwin.
University of Guelph, Science Complex, 2009

The anniversary of Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ reflects on ways we see the world around us, our place in the world, and the age-old question, where do we come from? Most remarkably, for me as an artist, he achieved this by careful observation, and the accumulation of knowledge and skills from a broad range of fields. By developing his theory through observation, Darwin illustrates the possibilities and intimacy of ecosystems and life on earth.

As a society we are continually learning about evolution particularly in medical research, plate tectonics and geology, and more recently, accumulation of climate data and monitoring of global warming all through careful documentation and observation. It is the accumulation of all these fields and more that begins to depict an illustrated history of the earth and all its life forms, which in turn becomes a more accurate illustration of ourselves.

The works here don’t relate to the book directly, but under this larger umbrella as the progression of scientific understanding directly relates to understanding ourselves. From the most recent glaciations and down through the bedrock, the earth tells it story that helped to shape the world around us as we know it today. By seeing glimpses back through time we begin to understand both where we come from and the preciousness of life on earth. Pushing back to the real primordial soup, over a billion years ago, not too much is known about what creatures existed. There is however evidence of bacteria that pulled nutrients from the water and secreted the saline and calcite deposits into large billowing structures called Thrombolites. The layers built up on top of one another for thousands of years, from over 1.5 billion years ago (the age of the Canadian Shield) to the Cambrian period, up to 505 million years ago. A billion years ago the oceans were acidic and green with iron, the skies red with iron particles, a place unbearable to most life. Thrombolites are believed to be in part responsible for the oxygen rich atmosphere still present today due to photosynthesis of hundreds of millions of year’s worth of Thrombolite filled waters. The Thrombolite-like representations are life-size, and aim to put the viewer or audience in the primordial soup, reflecting on time and the complexity of life.