The Power of Art #112 Pamela Schilderman ‘Gorgonium sapianum’

Schilderman was part of the 2023 Liverpool Biennale, Schilderman, alongside other artists confronting climate change, recently participated in the show 'For Man is Coming Here,' with the main body of work led by Daniel Steegman Mangrane.

Schilderman’s works showcase her environmental activist approach to art, as she incorporates her own blood into one of her glass sculptures to highlight the price of human interference with the planet. The free-standing glass sculpture, ‘Gorgonium sapianum,’ depicts a Gorgonian coral made up of red fan-like tendrils of blown glass. Combining both liquid and solid, the blood and methanol-filled spindly branches point menacingly outwards, elegant, fragile, but harmful if broken. Schilderman’s use of these materials is symbolic of the relationship between humans and coral.

Polluted oceans and global warming, with humans to blame, has caused coral to become an endangered species. At the same time, some coral can be highly toxic to humans if they come into physical contact with it. The question of threat is played out in Schilderman’s glass sculpture, mirroring the tenuous relationship between humans and the ecosystem, lingering between life and death.

Her solo exhibition, EcologyNOW, is on at the Lapworth Museum of Geology, in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, and it runs from 6th October until 20th December 2023.

Opening times
Monday to Friday - 10:00 till 17:00
Saturday and Sunday - 12:00 till 17:00

Lapworth Museum of Geology - Earth Sciences Building, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2T1.
Image:
Courtesy and ©Pamela Schilderman, Gorgonium sapianum, (Gorgonian black fan coral) 2023, glass, blood and methanol, H310 mm x W310 mm x D190 mm.

Courtesy and ©Pamela Schilderman, Georgia McConnell and Renee Pfister Art & Gallery Consultancy, 2023.