Artist Louise Frances Smith brings Sargassum Tide show to The Margate School
The artist, who featured at Somerset House recently, will also be hosting community workshops
Margate based artist Louise Frances Smith, who recently exhibited her new body of work Sargassum Tide at Collect 2023, Somerset House, will be showcasing the work in a solo show at The Margate School from April 19 - 23.
Louise’s (@lou_frances) practice spans sculpture, installation and works on paper. She experiments with an array of materials including clay, seaweed and bioplastic to create highly textured surfaces. By collecting materials from her local coastline, Louise’s works are conceptually and physically linked to the landscape from which she takes most of her inspiration.
To accompany the exhibition, she will be hosting community workshops for the general public, and in collaboration with The Garden Gate Project, The Pavilion Youth and Community Cafe Project, The Margate School MA Students and studio holders. Works that participants make will be on display as part of the exhibition.
The series features pieces made using wireweed seaweed (Sargassum muticum) and Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas), two ‘non-native’ species currently thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change.
Louise has collected these materials from her local coastline to create a new body of experimental work that shows the repercussions of human intervention on our fragile coastal ecosystems. The inspiration for the works comes from epibiosis - the close interaction between two different organisms, the host organism providing an environment for the other which is attached to its living surface.
Pacific oysters were introduced to the UK for farming in the 1970s. They brought with them wireweed seaweed which was thought to have been attached to the oyster shells. At the time it was believed that it would not flourish, but since the rise in sea temperature, these species can now bloom.
