Ediacara laces
Dimensions
220 x 220 x 130 mm (largest), 75 x 135 x 110 mm (smallest)
Materials
Five vessels: cotton gauze bandaging, rice-paper, cotton thread, whipper-snipper cord, bone, rust-stained textile from Ediacaran Hills site, coated wire, and computer-designed guipure lace motifs
Artist statement
‘The Ediacaran fossils are the remains of delicate and very beautiful soft-bodied creatures, the first known multicellular animals on this planet. They were discovered on the underside of wave-rippled rocks high in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, and are about 540 million years old. Researching them I arrived at the notion of ‘time’ as a filter that only selects certain things (under very special circumstances) to become fossils. It is extraordinarily rare for anything as soft and squishy as a 540-million-year-old jellyfish to have its impression preserved. And it’s just as astonishing that such imprints are ever discovered.
I fell upon the notion of apparently fragile, transparent lace-like objects to express my wonder at these natural phenomena. Vessels with a sieve-like character, rounded like domestic colanders, cast elusive shadows about their bases. Time determines what now exists, and hence for what is knowable and what yet might yet be found.’
Ediacara laces
Alvena Hall
Dimensions
220 x 220 x 130 mm (largest), 75 x 135 x 110 mm (smallest)
Materials
Five vessels: cotton gauze bandaging, rice-paper, cotton thread, whipper-snipper cord, bone, rust-stained textile from Ediacaran Hills site, coated wire, and computer-designed guipure lace motifs
Artist statement
‘The Ediacaran fossils are the remains of delicate and very beautiful soft-bodied creatures, the first known multicellular animals on this planet. They were discovered on the underside of wave-rippled rocks high in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, and are about 540 million years old. Researching them I arrived at the notion of ‘time’ as a filter that only selects certain things (under very special circumstances) to become fossils. It is extraordinarily rare for anything as soft and squishy as a 540-million-year-old jellyfish to have its impression preserved. And it’s just as astonishing that such imprints are ever discovered.
I fell upon the notion of apparently fragile, transparent lace-like objects to express my wonder at these natural phenomena. Vessels with a sieve-like character, rounded like domestic colanders, cast elusive shadows about their bases. Time determines what now exists, and hence for what is knowable and what yet might yet be found.’