The Catch by Julia Lohmann

London artist Julia Lohmann was in Sapporo, Japan for a three month residency and created The Catch. Anna Bates writes in Iconeye:

The 90sq m installation is designed to raise the issue of depleting tuna supplies in Japan, where 80 per cent of what is caught in the Mediterranean is sold. “I wanted to find out whether people know about the issue here,” says Lohmann. “Most people prefer to turn a blind eye.”

To make the wave, 500 fishing crates were screwed together and attached to a wooden supporting structure. Fishing wire was used to keep things in place.

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The installation has been modelled on an Almadraba – a traditional seven-kilometre network of underwater nets that have been used in the Mediterranean for centuries to catch tuna. Next to the wave is a room full of empty fish crates, to “confront viewers with a vast empty ocean, depleted by over-fishing and our unthinking consumption of marine life,” says Lohmann. ::Iconeye

Lohmann told Dezeen: The Catch confronts viewers with a vast empty ocean, depleted by over-fishing and our unthinking consumption of marine life.

Visitors are swept up in towering waves made of used empty fish boxes taken from Sapporo’s fish market. Unwittingly, they find themselves drifting into its womb-like core. Far from comforting however, the small sanctuary at the centre of the installation is bare; its walls lined with empty roe boxes are more akin to those of a church that has been raided by iconoclasts. ::Dezeen