Barena Association reposted this
Opening today at The Seahorse in the context of Dartmouth Food Festival. Thank you Mitch Tonks “With a common love for traditional fishing culture and the beauty of the sea, Mitch Tonks welcomes Allison Zurfluh’s art to the Seahorse in a celebration of the ties and friendship that bind Dartmouth and the island of Burano in the Venice Lagoon. For over a decade, Allison has been developing a deeply personal visual language in her quest to represent the Lagoon and its fight for survival in a post-industrial world. Her work is a dialogue with the changes and challenges faced by the northern salt marshes with regard to exploitation and climate change. Allison’s growing relationship with and fondness for South Devon are increasingly evident, from the area’s rugged coastline and rattan withy pots to its jovial culture that echoes that of Burano island where she lives. She finds a deep connection between her days fishing with Massimo in the northern lagoon and the culture that permeates the shores of the River Dart and the estuaries of South Devon. The artist uses palette knife and brush to draw close to the basic shapes that constitute the landscape, stratifying the territory into layers of oil paint. These overlappings not only create a visual discourse on the essentialisation of the wetlands, they explore an artistic questioning on the purity of the elements. With an appreciation for the rawest forms of nature, her process interrogates the ecosystem’s evolution over time and, more tragically, the human behaviours that have led to its decay. Allison Zurfluh is the co-founder and president of Barena Association , whose mission it is to raise support for the restoration and protection of the intertidal salt marshes of the northern Venice Lagoon.”