Pea Arts About

28 February 2020 Still not quite done with the bronzes in Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable , I’ve been puzzling over the blue bronzes in the show such as Mermaid and Andromeda and the Sea Monster . Hirst’s own website, which can be useful for information on editions, dimensions and materials, doesn’t list them. Digging around elsewhere, I’ve found images of Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi ’s bronze figure Andromeda and the Sea Monster ( c . 1725), held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, that show similarities with Andromeda straining against her chains as Cetus approaches and no sign of Perseus. I also found that two bronze Hirst mermaid figures with bright blue patinas feature on the bar of a seafood restaurant in London. The article about this on Hirst’s website states that there is also a bronze relief depicting a shark alongside a mermaid that calls to mind the 1990s shark-in-formaldehyde works. But being made and installed in 2015, they also project forwa

21 February 2020 From what I’ve worked through and identified in the last two posts in which I’ve discussed the coral and the collections in Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable , I’ve come to consider the distinctions between ‘ocean-dipped’ (that is, the works with coral and those photographed while submerged or being surfaced) and ‘dry’ work. Here, I want to look broadly at the relationships between the bronze ocean-dipped ‘originals’ and their glossy bronze (or made to look bronze) ‘reproductions’. There is still much to sift through with the many other materials, and that will come later as works made from, for example, marble, gold, silver, jade, malachite or granite were relatively untarnished apart from apparent marine life on select pieces. There are also works of which there was only one version in the show so it is unclear whether or not they ever got wet. As I pointed out back in part 5 , an anomalous reproduction with only its ocean

14 February 2020 An area of the Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable show lacking attention and scrutiny is the collections of coins, gold nougats, weaponry, vessels, jewellery and other artefacts displayed in cases throughout both exhibition sites. As set-dressing of excessive value that otherwise might have been given more focus if it were not for the spectacle and vast array of the sculptural works, these collections and their presentation were part of the authoritative (and western-centric) ‘museumification’ of artefacts the exhibition implicitly invited viewers to scrutinise. The presence of these displays as unnoticed set-dressing no doubt hinged on visitors tending not to look too closely due to time and the sheer amount of elaborate stuff to look at. I myself was guilty of that – and often am in museums as well. Regarding Treasures , they are part of the puzzle and merit focus. Early on in my initial research on Treasures in 2017 and 2018, I came across

7 February 2020 In part 13 I wryly suggested that between the invocation of Ariel from The Tempest and the several severed heads of Medusa, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable was sorted for fictional coral. Damien Hirst is already well-known for turning parts or wholes of once living beings into sculptures, and with Treasures it seemed that West Indian Ocean coral was collateral damage in resurfacing artefacts it had supposedly made its home for around 2000 years. Knowing that the Amotan / Apistos story is a new rather than ancient myth, the possibility that the coral-encrusted works in the show had been made and submerged a while ago should be floated, yet also held up to scrutiny. Knowing little about the science of coral, my questions have included: Does coral grow that fast? Do so many different types of coral grow so close together? How did the coral retain so many bright colours? Does it not bleach when surfaced? Would s