(from left to right) ‘Peanuts Full Stop’, 2020, ‘Klang Full Stop’, 2020 and ‘Orator Full Stop’, 2020; granite sculptures by artist Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press seen at the Greenpeace office in London. © Jack Taylor Gotch / Greenpeace
Sono sempre un poco perplesso su queste azione fra arte e impegno ambientale come ha realizzato in questi giorni l' artista Fiona Banner che ha posto delle sculture nel Mare del Nord nella Dogger Bank con la nave di Greenpeace Esperanza.
Il progetto vuole sensibilizzare il governo della Gran Bretagna sulla pesca illegale a strascico e distruttiva che avviene in questi territori con queste opere che dovrebbero fare da barriera.
Dal Sito di Greenpace
The other two, called Peanuts and Orator (also fonts), were loaded onto the Greenpeace ship the Esperanza this afternoon and deployed as an installation in the sea in the Dogger Bank Marine Protected Area, which is not being properly protected.
It’s the finale of the incredible Greenpeace action that has been going on in that area over the last weeks.
They are sculpted from granite, similar to that which was glacially deposited in the Dogger Bank – the stretch of land which once connected Britain to continental Europe thousands of years ago.
Peanuts and Orator will be left on the seabed. They will become part of an underwater barrier that obstructs big industry bottom trawler activity in this straight.
Artist Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press poses with her sculptures “Peanuts Full Stop” (left) and “Orator Full Stop” while aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, at Tower Bridge in London. © Suzanne Plunkett / Greenpeace
Taking the idea of language and fonts as couriers or messengers of information, the full stops speak of an impasse in language.
Here, they are becoming physical impasses, obstructions, but at the same time making a stand for the need to engage with each other and through action – and a need for ‘us’ to engage with nature.
Granite is an incredibly hard, mighty stone, formed over eons. Whilst trying to shape it, it became clear it was resisting human intervention – nature is strong but fragile, it cannot bend to our will.
Language is the medium of treaties, argument, debate and agreement. The Full Stop sculptures are symbols of language on the precipice – massively blown-up, made physical and confrontational.
The Full Stops symbolise an impasse and crisis in language, highlighting the slipperiness of communication in a time of polarised rhetoric during which the term ‘post truth’ has become common vernacular.
Full Stop shows the disjunction between what a Marine Protected Area stands for and the reality of what is happening in those areas. The work represents a rupture and demands a new approach.
The pandemic has made us more alert to our vulnerability and the precariousness of nature and our ecology. I am deploying these sculptures as agents for change – a call to the government to stop, reconsider and take action. It’s time to take a breath and redraw the lines. Surely the seabed is the bottom line!
