This artwork is my homage in memory of Oceanographer, Emeritus Professor Thomas Malone, phytoplankton researcher and passionate ocean advocate.

His work highlighted that problematic nexus between human choices and habitat impact, also a central theme of my art practice. Influenced by Australian reflections on ‘connection to country’; I create glass art-narratives about my ocean-edge experience, and home, on the coastal desert of the North-West. Shaped similar to the Venetian glass-form of the ‘fazzoletto Venini’, and reminiscent of many diaphanous marine lifeforms, the high edge of this vessel represents the ocean surface where phytoplankton live; oceanic micro-organisms responsible for significant production of Earth’s oxygen. They are represented by murrine inserts depicting the markings of phytoplankton diatoms. Appearing lace-like, the artwork voids represent oxygen bubbles, precious to human breath.

Microscopic lifeforms aren’t visible and since they are unseen, I hopefully ask the question through my artwork, are they valued, or valued enough?

Photographer – Anton Blume