Etching with aquatint
15x28cm
2019
Edition of 4
Handprinted on 220gsm Fabriano paper
This etching was produced in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, for their upcoming exhibition 'First Life' (July 2019 - February 2020). A small group of printmakers were asked to respond to the important fossil loans from Chengjiang (China) along with other 'Cambrian explosion' material from Burgess Shale (Canada) and Sirius Passet (Greenland). Around 450 million years ago, Earth experienced a huge increase in new life forms, many of which laid the foundations for the body plans of all subsequent animal life. This occurrence, termed the Cambrian Explosion, took place over a period of just 20 million years – a mere blink of the eye in geological terms – and First Animals reveals how amazing fossil evidence from this epoch is being uncovered and investigated to shed new light on our earliest beginnings.
Galeactena hemispherica is believed to be a distant precursor of the comb jellies found throughout our seas and oceans today. With its eight rows of rippling ‘cilia’ (used to propel it through the water) it probably diffracted light as it moved. I was also drawn to the accidental patterns scraped into the rock by the geologists as they unearthed this particular specimen, which somehow also suggest its pulsing movement.
Further information about the exhibition at Oxford University Museum of Natural History can be found here.