Additional information
| Artist | Laurence O'Toole |
|---|---|
| Year | 2020 |
| Material | Fen peat, PVA, vinyl |
| Dimensions | 500cm x 220cm x 12cm |
No North Star
By Laurence O’Toole – View Artist’s Profile
The winter storms of December 2019 shifted large volumes of sand from the beaches near my home at Carnsore point, this exposed peat deposits near the high-water mark. The land beneath these deposits was inundated by abrupt sea level rise during the Mid Holocene epoch, between 4200 years and 8200 years ago. This period, called the Northgrippian Age, was part of the general post-glacial warming period. It was also bracketed by two events where there was rapid climate change and sea level rise known as the 4.2 Ka Event and the 8.2 Ka Event. As well as my own research I began a correspondence with Kieran Craven, a geologist with the CHERISH heritage and climate change project. He corroborated my initial query about the peat and added some scientific rigour to my research by supplying me with several papers on this subject, some even concerning my own locality.
Description
P.O.A
Walking over the branches and other plant matter poking out of the peat felt like a type of time travel or visiting an alien landscape. I was struck by the similarities to our contemporary climate crisis and the cyclical nature of these events, like a sensation of geological déjà vu. These deposits are around 6000 years old when the sea-level was up to 2 metres lower than today. I extracted cores of the peat with a homemade coring tool and carefully dried them.
Drawing upon Robert Smithson’s concept of Site / Non-site for inspiration, I have brought these cores into the gallery and laid them out to indicate the positions of the stars in Ursa Major during the Northgrippian Age. 6000 years is enough time to show the proper motions of these stars The small dislocation from their modern positions is marked beside each core. I ascertained the position and direction of each star with data from the Hipparchus Satellite Sky Survey. In this representation of deep time I want to invert the night sky, to look down upon a view that our Neolithic ancestors looked up at. It’s also a contemplation on the land adjacent to those beaches that will ultimately become future peat deposits, buried by new beaches when our man-made sea levels rise and the Anthropocene becomes a chapter in future geology text.
