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courtesy Shaun James Cox / The Wick
courtesy Shaun James Cox / The Wick
Alastair and Fleur Mackie
Mount’s Bay Stool, 2022
Sub fossilised oak (C14 date 4400 to 4700 before present)
48 x 38 x 38 cm
POA
Oak from a tree that died two and a half thousand years before the start of the Common Era, at a time when the Great Pyramid of Giza and the...
Oak from a tree that died two and a half thousand years before the start of the Common Era, at a time when the Great Pyramid of Giza and the standing stones of Stonehenge were under construction. The tree once stood in what is now Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, at a time when the bay was a wooded and far from the sea. Preserved in peat, buried under sand, and eventually submerged by the rising Atlantic Ocean, it lay hidden for over four and a half thousand years before being uncovered by a winter storm in 2020.Echoing the tradition of placing seats beside bodies of water as spaces for pause or contemplation, the form of the sculpture was shaped directly by the volume and character of the recovered material. Mount’s Bay Stool was first exhibited in We Are Floating In Space at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, a stone’s throw from Mount’s Bay and its submerged forest.With thanks to Frank Howie and the Cornwall Geoconservation Group.