“TERRITORIAL STREAK” - Sculpture for London Zoo by Teresa + Abby Martin 

This commission was a diversion from other works undertaken before. But to increase awareness of the plight of these amazing creatures in the wild, London Zoo wanted 5 tiger sculptures to illustrate the emergence to adulthood of Jae-Jae, their magnificent Sumatran tiger. This version was to show him with all his fighting tools on display, delivering a winning punch. 

It was cast using a rubber mould from the master modelled from 4 dustbins full of clay (remodelled from its previous existence as a life-sized humpback whale fin !) 

The different metals in the glass fibre resin compete with the elements and acid effects of the rain to be the dominant colour. The streaks created give the impression of movement, the forward thrust of his attack. He needs to win if he is to help his streak of tigers to survive and thrive. The stripy texture looks like scratch marks as if they are part of his fight for
existence as well as his camouflage. 

The platform he stands on represents the little bit of land left to the tigers that he is defending as well as being his defence against the human onslaught at the zoo. Part of the challenge was how to make a sculpture survive in a Zoo environment on a tight budget. Rising to this challenge was our mother/daughter team making and casting this Indonesian creature through a snowy Winter in the South of England. 

The New Tiger Territory opened in March 2013.

“ADUR PORTALS” Sussex Past meets Adur Future.

A community arts project funded by Adur District Council in 2013 with money received from Tesco Plc as part of an Agreement for development at Holmbush, Shoreham by Sea.  Inspired by the creative writing and drawings of local children, following studies of portals seen in their local architecture.

The Concepts

~ Using the idea of ‘modern fossils’ and the theory of a secret passage running from The Marlipins Museum, (and Paradise Pets) basement to the river. (There is even a cat flap inserted for the renowned cat whose skeleton was found in the basement.)

~The flints cast into the walls have been knapped by modern cars driving up to Mill Hill, not by craft workers of old.

~ The concept invites closure or adventure. We could store ideas and emotions behind some doorways and open others to the imagination.

~ There is a Seekers Challenge printout available below with things to find in the stone work around the doors.

~ The details, fossil prints and inserts in the stone work were developed from ideas and experiments of local sculpture students exploring stone and flint and positive and negative forms and various materials, such as resin, as they learned about the casting process. There are tactile elements to explore for the more visually challenged and some very small low details the very young will discover first.

~ Items imported and exported are featured as well as details reflecting the local industries around the town

~ Images of local families and workmen from Adur are represented in tiny photograph negatives framed inside the resin. Smiling fishermen, nurses, photographers, engineers, warehouse workers, life-boat men, bus drivers, babies, grandparents, toys and pets are all set into the stone.

~ In the sculpture workshops we held last year grandparents worked with grandchildren to create creatures that might have lived in the chalk downs forming burrows. These burrows eventually filled with silica becoming the flint stones used in the chequered walls of the Marlipins. All ages can enjoy peering into these newly formed flints to see what has been entrapped and set in time.

~ You can cup some flints and see them glow with the sun’s stored energy and see the contents of others better in the cleaning rain.

~ The Portals were modelled in clay and cast in stone resin using reconstituted stone, graphite, silica and marble dust from the mountains of white granules as seen, until recently, along the river bank at aggregates company Minelco.

~ The decreasing sized doorways echo aspects of our treasured local architectural character and the Norman influence, such as our wonderful churches of Old and New Shoreham and the Marlipins museum with its idiosyncrasies.

~Design elements of the old Norfolk suspension bridge are used and the arches and grid texture of the old Footbridge.

Celebrating the Old and the New, the In and the Out.