Pukehou art gallery's sea exhibition morphs into environmental campaign

(L-R) Sisters Jan Speeden and Vivienne Hollings with Ms Speeden's Devasatation Menu art piece on display at the Artistically Inclined Gallery. Photo/Duncan Brown. HBT18092901.JPG

What began as an exhibition to celebrate the sea has morphed into a challenge to tackle some of its greatest problems.

Artistically Inclined Gallery owner Vivienne Hollings said she put a call out to all artists in February to create works of art inspired by the sea after watching BBC's documentary series, Blue Planet.

"Blue Planet completely inspired me because there's so much beautiful stuff on there.

"So I put out this artists' challenge and as we've learnt about what is happening with the oceans it's just got more and more devastating the more we've learnt."

Ms Hollings said she realised she had an art platform to communicate messages about environmental issues and 12 artists, aged 19 to 90, came forward to showcase their work at her free exhibition, Flotsam and Jetsam.

"It's gone from celebrating the sea to we need to save the sea! It's turned into something that educates people about the environment, what's going on and how we can all do our bit to make a difference.

"It's really sad what's happening to the world but it's been amazing to realise the platform we can utilise to get messages out there."

Local artist Jan Speeden, who is Ms Hollings' sister, said she created a "Devastation Menu" shaped with clay as a dark-humoured take on a "Degustation Menu" to highlight the sea's environmental issues.

"I started off looking for images to work with and all these awful things came up. The more I dug into it the worse it was."

Jan Speeden and Vivienne Hollings hope to educate the community about threats to the ocean through their art exhibition. Photo/Duncan Brown.

Overfishing and deep seabed mining were just two issues she raises in her "four course" tongue-in-cheek menu, she said.

"It's been a challenging thing to do. I've found it quite distressing. On our pamphlets there's a list of really simple things people can do to help protect the waters and our environment generally.

"It's not rocket science and it's not huge so to see people be motivated to do something would be great. If everybody who saw it did one thing that would be awesome."

Ms Speeden said he hoped it would both educate and encourage the local community to take part in addressing environmental issues.

"When you look at the big picture it's so daunting and you feel like you can't make any different at all. What we came up with was the fact that tiny steps make a difference."

Ms Hollings said her event was a rolling exhibition and the public were welcome to visit, be inspired and then create their own works of art to contribute.

The exhibition will open its doors to the public from 10am to 2pm this Saturday and the following Wednesday, April 11, at Pukehou art gallery at 167 State Highway 2.