Features / Aimee selected for contemporary art exhibition

A SHETLAND-based artist has been shortlisted for a prestigious 2020 contemporary art exhibition with two pieces of work designed to highlight the threat posed to the natural environment in the islands and beyond.

Aimee Labourne said she was “delighted” to be one of 122 artists selected from thousands of applicants to feature in the 2020 Wells Art Contemporary.

Aimee moved to Shetland in 2016 after completing studies in fine art at Falmouth University in Cornwall. She explores the islands’ natural environment and its heritage and history, making work about human notions of landscape and space.

She told Shetland News: “The two pieces selected are pencil drawings of plastiglomerate samples found on Shetland coastlines. A proposed new kind of ‘human-made’ rock, plastiglomerate consists of a mix of melted plastic debris and natural sediment, and its presence on beaches around the world is evidence of just how extensive plastic pollution has become.

“Through drawing, I wish to isolate these uncannily organic samples from their usual shoreline context where they blend in all too easily, and so highlight the threat that plastic poses to our oceans and also our most remote and beautiful coastlines.”

A record-breaking 3,600 submissions were sent in for the Somerset-based visual art competition, and 128 pieces of widely-varying artwork by 122 artists were shortlisted by selectors Lisa Wright, Neville Gable and Phillip Allen.

The works will be available to view in a digital exhibition opening online from tomorrow (Thursday 1 October) with the support of Arts Council England.