Jonathan Baxter and I have made three collaborative works, for Fife’s mobile museum – MAC. Jonathan curated the exhibition, focussing on sustainability in the Kingdom of Fife, or ‘The Kingdom of If’. The exhibition will be touring for the next year, visiting many schools, community centres, and cultural organisations in Fife.
‘Throwaway Living,’ rag rug made of plastic bags.
This piece was made by Jonathan, myself and hundreds of helping hands at several workshops and drop-in sessions across Fife. These included the ‘Big Tent’ festival, St Andrews Museum, Kirkcaldy Library, Lochgelly Centre and Manna Cafe in Newport-on-Tay.
The title for the rug was taken from a life magazine article written in 1955. The article enthusiastically comments on how liberated and time-wealthy everyone will be now that we can eat our dinner off plastic plates and throw them in the bin…
‘Unsustainable Bunting’
Our second piece was a series of relief prints on black bunting. The prints depicted the 22 Priority Species of Scotland. The black bunting was made from broken umbrellas, discarded on Windy days.
‘Table Map’
The third piece was a table map, cut into the shape of Fife, with roads carved into the surface. Attached to the table is a curvimeter, for measuring the distances travelled by MAC. On a blackboard, visitors are then invited to calculate the carbon emissions of that day’s journey, and how many trees would need to be planted to ‘off-set’ the carbon footprint.
Sarah Gittins 