Offshore

Offshore brings together a collection of recent sculptures and works on paper by Tania Kovats, that all have a coastal reference point. Three sculptural pieces in this show, Basalt I, II and III, describe two of Britain’s best known volcanic rock formations: Staffa, a small island of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides and the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. In both places rock formations made up of columns of basalt, packed tightly together and hexagonal in shape, rise out of the sea. Kovats recreates these dramatic geological narratives in her work, capturing and memorialising remarkable landscapes. ‘Strike’ and ‘Tilted’ are two very different but equally dramatic coastal landscapes. Turbulent geological forces are revealed in these exposed cliff faces that are framed or housed in simple white plinths.

Alongside these sculptures are a variety of works on paper, notably a series in which the artist has meticulously mapped and traced the islands of all the oceans of the globe. This is an ongoing project of considerable scale and the exhibition includes, ‘Indian’ and ‘Atlantic’, two new works in the group. This series follows on from a set of drawings where Kovats mapped over two thousand rocks or islands around the coast of Britain that are broken from the principle landmass.