Title of the artwork: Red Tide
Research theme: Aquaculture in a Changing Climate (Amy Leigh Mackintosh; read more…)
From the artist: The work is made from approximately 200 skins from saithe fished near Tromsø. The skins are a waste product from local seafood production, and I have tanned them using the bark of birch and willow trees. All the raw materials come from my local area, apart from plant-based dye that give the red colour.
Our experience is that fishing for saithe depends on the state of the tide with the fish biting more readily when it is flooding. The colour Red is associated with strong feelings of good and evil, with love and war and with life and death.
The title “Red Tide” is taken from the phenomenon that can occur when the sea temperature rises causing a bloom of sometimes toxic algae that, in the worst case, kills other marine life.
Climate change is, in many ways, regarded as positive for us in the north, but could the population of saithe and other local fish species be threatened?
“Red Tide” can be interpreted either directly or symbolically in a wider sense.
