ART AND ENVIRONMENT - Hondalea
Arte y medioambiente
Art and environment
Cristina Iglesias believes that art can play an integral role in the defence of ecological causes and also in the restoration of buildings and/or abandoned places. That is what she did with Water Tower of Toledo, for example, and it is what she does in the Lighthouse.
Her intention is that the project is a space, a place, where something unique can be experienced, and that, at the same time, generate dialogue and make us aware of the need to protect the seas and the environment around us and where we live; at the same time restoring a public space of the metropolis, something remote, but in the centre of the city. The work, also evokes the idea of art as a refuge, also present in other creations by Cristina Iglesias.
At the same time, it does imply the renovation and consolidation of a building, which was in a critical condition, as well as creating a point of interest that increases its value and potential and is a new reference.
The Lighthouse is a sustainable work that dialogues with nature. It is sustainable and the cover has been made with translucent solar panels.
Visits are controlled and encounters related to nature, flora, and fauna, as well as history and memory of the place, are prepared.
The Island
Santa Klara Island is of singular beauty, neatly perched between land and sea, and harbouring much natural beauty in its relatively small surface area. Walking along the paths that wend their way through meadows and small woods, one can freely contemplate tree species indigenous to the area, adapted to the salinity and strong winds that blow in from the sea, and flourishing alongside trees and plants brought here by man, forever zealous to domesticate the landscape within these environs. On the sharp cliffs that hug the coast, tinged yellow by marine fennel and the soft pink of the heathers, marine birds flutter around their nests. In the flat sandy areas surrounding the island - which, depending on the whims of the tide, are sometimes submerged, sometimes exposed to the open air - a breath-taking ecosystem looms large and luscious, home to a broad variety of seaweed and aquatic animals.
The nature of the rock formation embedded in the sublayer of the Island is the fruit of geological phenomenon that has also had a hand in shaping it into something that stands out as different within the coastal relief features. That hand can still be felt. The beautiful, elaborated alveolar structures still being spawned today attest to that.
Symposium
The public opening of the sculpture on the island on the weekend of 5/6 June 2021 was preceded by a symposium called The Rocky Coast - Geology, Ecology and Sculpture, co-directed by the director and co-founder of Artangel and contemporary art expert, James Lingwood, the geologist and oceanographer Adolfo Uriarte, Director of Natural Heritage and Climate Change of the Basque Government and Manuel Soto, Professor of Cell Biology and Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Experimental Marine Biology and Biotechnology (PIE Plentzia Marine Station EHU-UPV).
Based on the interrelated themes in Iglesias' work, the symposium brought together a group of experts to share thought in the fields of art, literature, geology and ecology, over the course of two sessions on the afternoon of 3 June and the morning of June 4 at the Aquarium Auditorium. It could also be followed by Zoom. It was a Symposium organized in collaboration with the Summer Courses of the University of the Basque Country and with the support of the BBVA Foundation. This symposium was part of the Sustainability Forum that both develop. Likewise, Ihobe (Public Society of Environmental Management of the Basque Government) and the Department of the Environment and Hydraulic Works of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa collaborated in it.
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