Troubled Waters Exhibition

Bruce Pearson's 'Troubled Waters' exhibition runs for less than a week - Monday 26th November to Saturday 1st December and is open 10am - 5.30pm daily at Art Galleries Europe, 18 Maddox Street, London W1S 1PL. The exhibition can also be viewed online at: www.brucepearson.net 

After trailing a few times across the remote Southern Ocean on and off over the past 35 years, my journey in the wake of the albatross is just about over.  The world’s great oceans are largely beyond most people’s experience and imagination. Living and working with wandering, grey-headed, black-browed albatrosses on South Georgia and Bird Island 35 years ago I assembled a huge folio of drawings and paintings from life.  But in recent years I began to realize that archive represented a turning point in the fortunes of these remarkable birds. I was able to return a few times more recently to South Georgia and the Southern Ocean - and was shocked by what I found. Wanting to witness the collision of seabirds and fishermen on the open ocean, I worked with BirdLife International to gain extraordinary access to the work of the Albatross Task Force, last year joining the crew of a longline fishing boat, and a trawler, off the coast of South Africa.  The result of combining these three main elements of the albatross story spread over my lifetime, is the forthcoming Troubled Waters book and exhibition.  The aim throughout has been to engage readers and exhibition visitors in an experience both visceral and compelling; one that offers insights into our understanding of the oceans, and which inspires new engagement and identification with an extraordinarily urgent conservation crisis.