Oceanography

• In the vibrant ebb and flow of Glasgow’s Byres Road, a new residency of snorkelling artists shines a light on the hidden deep.
• This exhibition showcases their diverse range of multimedia artworks, from illustration and printmaking to audio recordings of underwater seascapes and animation.

• Installation artist Vicki Fleck’s work uses a variety of media while “exploring the fluid, spongy and colourful landscape” underwater.
• She says she has been particularly inspired by the horizonless perspective of the snorkeller, “where everything comes up and towards”.

Internationally acclaimed wildlife artist and scientific illustrator Rachel Brooks’s detailed ink pieces capture the often-overlooked marine life found in UK coastal waters, while drawing on her expertise in zoology and marine biology.

• This residency has also inspired poems and storytelling, exhibited with QR codes that direct people to podcasts and compositions by some participants.
• Composer and sound artist Nicolette MacLeod creates work that invites people to listen to a series of compositions and podcast episodes made in response to the residency experience.

Hope spots

• The goal is to create a global network of hope spots, as far flung as the Galápagos and the Great Barrier Reef, that together help protect the hugely unexplored, yet fragile, ocean habitats beneath the waves.
• The Argyll Coast and Islands Hope Spot, on the west coast, is the first in Scotland and the only designated hope spot in UK coastal waters.

These residencies give artists access to new pastures of inspiration and discovery. By collaborating with marine scientists during this experience, the artists are encouraged to bring the mysteries and beauty of the largely unseen underwater worlds to a larger public. This can enlighten and educate people about the critical role that the ocean and its teeming-yet-threatened populations play in our own survival.

Visual storytelling

• Using visual narratives to communicate information can help demystify and explain sometimes complex, inaccessible and unfathomable places and lifeforms that most people would not normally have access to, or knowledge of.
• Visual narratives have a potency that supersedes textual formats.

• This form of storytelling presents information, data and ideas in a more accessible, visual context that allows more people to see the bigger picture.
• It can be hard for people to connect with the sea other than by looking out over its seemingly endless surface.
• But art initiatives can unite people to engage with causes that might otherwise escape their notice, because visual storytelling brings this subject matter closer to home.

Chris Mackenzie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.