1,000 Ancient Mariners

A friend recently gave me a copy of The Tiger Lillies’ production of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem of a doomed ship blown south to frozen Antarctica  (“I shot the albatross!”). The poem was written in 1798, just four years before our island was discovered by exploring mariners. This particular species of gastropod was described by Wood a little later, in 1828. For days I sorted, counted, arranged, shuffled and eventually glued – music filled the studio – and I saw the shells as tiny ancient mariners, pounded by waves in the bay for millennia, each one evidence of a life lived before dissolving into the Southern Ocean.

1,000 Ancient Mariners
1,000 Checkered Periwinkle (Austrocochlea odontis) shells and bookbinder’s gum on canvas
96 x 96 cm framed, image diameter 72 cm
Framed in a white box frame with side spacers, glass and hangers
SOLD – private collection Queensland