Glas: Alfred Wallis' New Plastic Panorama

Abstract

Remembering Glooscap’s granite Canoe was about when I started to think about the sea. It’s the same Ocean, here and at home, but it feels like different water. In Greco-Romano cultures, Poseidon or Neptune is the god of the brine. Their commands are so strong that to this day, superstition demands fishermen on both sides of the Atlantic refrain from mentioning anything church or clergy related, for fear of trying their temper. Who created the sea, or existence even, in the eyes of the Celts is a lost idea, overshadowed by modern interpretations of ‘paganism’, one of the draws for artists migrating to Cornwall. During the Christian proselytising of 7 Cornwall, one character - St Piran (The patron saint of Tin Miners, and by extension Cornwall), is said to have floated across the Celtic Sea from Ireland on a granite millstone he was strapped upon (punishment for misdoings in Ireland). Remembering Glooscap’s granite canoe, and using Alfred as a vehicle, I became compelled to tell some of the alternative and obscure narratives that extend across the Atlantic and tie these two maritime communities together, in an act of solidarity amidst ongoing Anglicisation.