The Shipping Forecast

Among the many exciting shows within the show, my favourite was a series of atmospheric panels by Delia Salter, each representing an area of sea (don't they have wonderful names: Cromarty, Dogger, German Bight, South Uitsire [oot-seer-uh], Finisterre) covered in the daily weather forecast for maritime areas.

The FoQ site says: "Having grown up listening to the shipping forecast, the wonderfully poetic names became familiar and yet still held a certain strangeness – a wildness – something that signified foreign places and adventure. Delia has used fabric and thread to interpret the world around her and her relationship to it; the size and length of the long, thin strips used has helped emphasise the depth of the water, and the dark, unknown depths beneath the water."

Delia started with the white light of morning in Viking and moved through bright noon and afternoon to the grey evening of the final panels, ending (as does the forecast) with areas Fair Isle, Faeroes, and South East Iceland. The panels are based on specific forecasts, for example the first of the bright ones, Humber, is: 30 September. South [wind] backing east 4 or 5. Mainly fair [weather]. Mainly good [visibility]. They are unified by their size, and by the line of the horizon -- the swell of the ever-moving sea.
Stitching is minimal, but the effect is magical.