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The exhibition The Burnt Sea by renowned Australian artist Janet Laurence (b. 1947) presents from 17. May 2025 an installation conceived especially for the Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung. Incorporating Alfred Ehrhardt’s iconic coral photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, Laurence creates an experiential setting that poetically conveys the fragility and loss of the marine world. Printed on nearly weightless silk voile fabric, the coral images appear transformed, fragmented, fragile, and vanishing. Lighting and currents of air are used to turn the fabric veils into a floating work of art—as if buffeted about by the ocean’s waves—underlining nature’s ephemeral beauty while also drawing attention to its endangered status.
Laurence’s enlarging and abstracting of Ehrhardt’s historical coral photographs reveals the macroscopic details of these unique creatures and their delicate structures. By inverting gray values and increasing contrasts, the artist creates abstracted images evocative of the once-vibrant but now disappearing ecosystems of coral reefs. Delicate white embroidery on the silk accentuates specific parts of the imagery and spills as threads, further underscoring the loss of the coral structures. In depicting the corals as decayed, ash-colored remnants, the installation reflects the “burning state” of the world – even under water where heatwaves …
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Image above: Janet Laurence, The Burnt Sea, 2025, Fotodruck auf Seidenvoile-Stoffen, © Janet Laurence.
