ATLAS Arts will be staging a sand pail building event at Glenbrittle Beach as part of Katie Paterson’s UK-wide project, First There is a Mountain.
Paterson has created of a set of ‘buckets and spades’ in the form of world mountains, from which the public will build mountains of sand across the UK coastline and play out the world’s natural geography against a series of tidal times. Each pail is a scale model of five of earth’s mountains: Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Shasta (N. America), Mount Fuji (Asia), Stromboli (Europe), and Uluru (Oceania), nested together in a set.
Choreographed over the period of daylight saving time during British Summer Time from 31st March to 27th October 2019, the artwork will tour on a weekly/bi-weekly basis to twenty-five high profile coastal art organisations around the UK. Made of bio-plastic formed from corn starch, at the end of the tour the sand pails will be composted, and in this process disappear completely.
Twenty-five new pieces of writing are being commissioned to accompany First There is a Mountain, corresponding to each beach location. The works will form a digital anthology, bringing together celebrated and emerging authors, poets, geologists, earth scientists, ecologists, technologists, and art writers. Each text will creatively respond to the artwork, and will be conveyed via spoken word at the start of the event. The diverse writings will connect with each locality, relating the artwork to the place, its people, its history and the wider geological context.
