http://www.artlink.com.au/articles.cfm?id=3077
We use a very ancient form of boat, the coracle, in 'Adrift'. There are many reasons for this. Like the bee skep, the coracle comes from our own cultural heritage. The work began with a strong concern about the feral cattle along the damaged creeks and river in our water catchment, and coracles were, (and still are in some places), made from animal hides stretched over a frame. In our coracles the frame is made from copper water pipe. Importantly, the coracle really is adrift, it is a circular vessel without stern or bows or keel, totally vulnerable to the currents, with just one paddle to guide it off the rocks. There is story that the early Christian monks, in their zeal to spread the new religion in the world, set out in the Atlantic ocean in these fragile craft, in the faith that their God would deliver them up on some heathen island. Today we humans need to relinquish this deeply embedded sense that we will be saved by some force beyond us – we alone have to sort out the mess we have made of this planet Earth, our only home.
Alison Clouston and Boyd Bonetown
