EamonnHarnett


SUCCESSIONAL HORIZONS 2021

HOPES FOR UNITY 2018

CIRCUMSTANCE 2016

REFLECTIONS UPON 2018

UNTITLED 2013

CONTACT






CIRCUMSTANCE





Installation Views


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


Circumstance (2016) is multichannel video and aquarium installation that inhabits various primitive sessile marine organisms. These organisms were collected from the Oosterschelde delta region along the coast of the Netherlands and lived during a period of a half a year in the studio.

The Oosterschelde delta stands synonym for change. Economically it is a pathway. Ecologically this pathway creates the possibility for the distribution of new allochtoon (immigrant) organisms into its marine environment. Many species documented within the installation have original environments around certain areas of the Pacific Ocean where water parameters have similar values. Examples of these species are: Botrylloides violaceus and Bispira polyomma.

Botrylloides violaceus or Seasquirts (part of Tunicates animal kingdom) are seen as the closest living relative to vertebrates (mammals). The common characteristics between these invertebrates as our ancestors and ourselves are seen during a relatively small period of the life cycle, during the embryonic or larval stage. Seasquirts are shaped not unlike a bagpipe. A sack with ingoing and outgoing syphon, filtering water and feeding through this simple system. The orange B. Violaceus lives communally; sharing an outer syphon and communal pathway through which water flows.

The installation implies sensuality and intimacy as ways of experience rather than knowledge acquisition. It is slippery and volatile and reflects as a comment on the arts institution within which it is made, De Ateliers. Precarity stands central to the work; as contents of the Oosterschelde are shared within the working space of my studio, two spaces intertwine. Every time this work is presented the anemone species Cereus pedunculatus (Dutch: Zonneroos, English: Daisy anemone) is collected from a specific mudflat along the Oosterschelde, the species clones itself through parthenogenesis, by collecting several bodies from thousands of clones and placing them within the aquarium and after placing them back into the natural ecosystem a sense of architectural human space becomes apparent.

Bispira polyomma, Actinia equine, Metridium senile, Cereus pedunculatus, Corella eumyota, Ciona intestinalis, Diplosoma listerianum, Ascidiella scabra, Styela clava, Ascidiella aspersa, Otrylloides violaceus, Psammechinus miliaris, Bryopsis plumosa, Littorina littorea, Urosalpinx cinerea, Patella vulgata, Ocenebra erinaceus.

Film stills

circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett


circumstance/EamonnHarnett