Gail Wight

Holdfast - Swept Away

At the Marine Biodiversity Lab at UC Irvine, Matt Bracken is studying the effects of global warming on the seaweeds of California’s coastline. At Matt’s invitation, artist Gail Wight has followed the lab’s research for the past five years. Holdfast and Swept Away are Wight’s interpretations of that research, influenced by the decades she’s spent exploring Northern California’s tide pools.

Holdfast is a book structured around the life-sized scan of a thirty meter piece of kelp found free floating off shore. Running the length of the book, the kelp forms a baseline to the story of Matt’s research. It’s accompanied by ghostly pochoir portraits of twenty-four lesser known seaweeds that are the subjects of Matt’s studies. In addition, twenty-four woodblock prints portray creatures that live amongst these seaweeds.

Swept Away is a small video installation. Unlike Holdfast, which offers a narrative of both hope and duress, Swept Away is a more visceral response to our coastal crisis. It’s an ode to the stunning beauty and hidden movement of Pacific Coast algae. It’s also a glimpse of our shoreline bereft of seaweed, and a reminder of the ebb and flow of evolutionary change.