Hull Geological Society

In October 2014 the HGS, Hull School of Art and Design and the Yorkshire Geological Society held a photographic competition on the topic "Aesthetics Geology".

Here is a list of the photographs submitted. You can click on some to view the photographs (they have been reduced from their original size and the HGS logo has been added for copyright reasons). There has been no other editing. The photographs with their titles in bold were selected for display at the exhibition by - Fraser Brigs (Fine Art), Matt Hopper (Fine Art), David Hill (Geology), Jean Hill, Alison Field (Photography).

Anna Kirk-Smith (Professional artist)-

• "Egested Drawing" - Lugworms draw beautifully with their backsides - one day I hope to find an individual who has diversified into another motif, or written a little message

• "Felicity Belfield's Favourite Rock" - Felicity was a dream - she introduced me to her love of geology and patiently explained the rocks of Sark that I carried by the bag-load to her door. This was a rock her grandson found for her - a simple breccia edged with galena, she treasured it.
• Dixcart Stream - Sark - This bay has multiple geological personalities, which are summarized in this beach-stream. I later sat down and painted these pebbles. The concentration required helped me get over a hangover.

Anthony Cooper (Professional geologist) -

• Plumpton Rocks Knaresborough - Weathered crags of the cross-bedded Plumpton Grit (Carboniferous- Namurian) reflected in the lake.
• Roussillon ochre quarry colours and microfaults - Roussillon ochre quarry, in the Luberon, Provence, France. Formerly worked to make ochre pigments, this picture shows a range of colours picked out by bedding and disrupted by numerous micro faults.
• White Sands desert New Mexico - The White Sands desert in New Mexico is formed of pure white gypsum sand that blows to form dunes between which there are salt pans with scrubby vegetation.

David Hill (Amateur) -

• "Saf Saf" - This picture was taken in January 2007 near the Saf Saf oasis, Erfoud, Morocco. The picture is of a field of Cretaceous stromatolites each about 5 cm in diameter.
• Jungmun" This picture was taken in August 2013 on the south coast of the island of Jeju, South Korea. The picture is of part of a basaltic lava flow and shows columnar jointing which formed as the lava cooled.
• "Bergen" - This picture was taken in March 2014 in the city of Bergen, Norway. The picture is of a boulder of gneiss in a wall showing the banding and folding that took place when it was buried at depth and heated to become plastic.

Jim Wilson -

• Little Houses on Hard Rock
• Rhinoceros
• Turbulence

Jo Booth (Artist / Photographer)-

• Millstone Grit - This large, unframed image shows a typical pastoral Yorkshire scene. Here I have aimed to critique the concept of the picturesque landscape, to illustrate that often, the reality of living and working in the Yorkshire Dales can be much harder than such picturesque views suggest. The title refers to the common, coarse sandstone, which can be found in much of Northern England. The surface of the piece has been damaged and scratched to illustrate photography's unreliable relationship with truth and reality.
• Yorkshire (Clapham) - This is large, layered image, in which a typical pastoral, idealised view of the Yorkshire Dales is overlaid with a damaged and torn map of the same area. Again I aim to critique the tradition of landscape painting and photography and its idealised versions of reality.
• Rural Idyll - This image is a large, collaged image of an idealised rural scene. Its surface has been damaged and scratched to interrupt photography's perceived relationship with truth and reality. Again I am critiquing the concept of the idealised rural idyll.

Karel De Pauw (Amateur photographer) -

• Morning Glory - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States: The distinct colours of the pool are due to thermophile bacteria that inhabit the water. Different types of thermophiles living at different temperature levels show distinct colour patterns.

• Spiralling Sediments - Spittal Beach, Northumberland, United Kingdom: Coastal erosion has shaped these limestone and sandstone sediments laid down in the deltas of the Lower Carboniferous into bizarre and beautiful miniature landscapes.

• Patagonian Chiaroscuro - Santa Cruz Province, Argentina: The early morning sun dramatically lit these lava formations on the Estancia Cueva de las Manos, creating a strong contrast between the darker, deeply weathered, basaltic strata and the lighter, fine grained, pumice layers.

Mark Bateman (Amateur) -

• The Geology of scale- James Hutton (1726-1797) recognised the rock cycle and it having "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end". This image encapsulates the rock cycle with erosion interplayed with deposition. Its lack of scale is deliberate as the rock cycle works both as the micro and landscape level.

Matt Fratson (Photographer) -

• All Wealth Alchemie - a small Polaroid taken a long time ago of Holdernes farmland by someone in my family I likely never met,, uncovered in a suitcase of forlorn landscapes, which my internal geology distantly remembers. Embossed beneath an Ice Age bone amulet in the shape of a foot, and rephotographed.

• A Measure of Time - a bunch of drenched flowers in plastic left upon the rocks at Mappleton beach.

Mike Horne (Geologist) -

• Buddleia - a reminder of lovely holiday near Kingsbridge, Devon.
• Art or Geology? - tangled iron pipes that were sea defenses at Happisburgh, Norfolk. Is it geology - it is part of mankind's attempt to control natural forces in the Anthrpocene. Is it art? - I carefully framed the picture in the field and then edited to make an image that I find aesthetically pleasing.
• This is not a fossil - it is a photograph of a concrete cast of an imaginary ammonite in the gardens of Burton Agnes Hall

Noel Worley (geologist) -

• Image 1

• Image 2

Patrick Boylan (Amateur geologist) -

• Uspallata - 600 metre sequence of stunningly coloured Triassic volcanics - lavas, pyroclastics and sedimentary rocks, on south side of the Uspallata Pass, Argentina, through the Aconcagua range of the Andes. Observed and recorded on 1 April 1835 by Charles Darwin, who noted: "red, purple, green, and quite white sedimentary rocks, alternating with black lavas, were broken up and thrown into all kinds of disorder by masses of porphyry of every shade of colour, from dark brown to the brightest lilac. It was the first view I ever saw, which really resembled those pretty sections which geologists make of the inside of the earth."
• Darwin's Fossil Forest - "Darwin's Fossil Forest", Uspallata, Argentina, in the Aconcagua range of the Andes. 30th - 31st March 1835 Charles Darwin investigated an area with around 70 very large fossil Aurucaria ("monkey puzzle") tree stumps and roots on the side of the valley. These were mainly preserved as casts in hardened volcanic ash, but with a few still showing carbonized bark and timber. Darwin concluded that the forest had been destroyed by a fast-moving pyroclastic flow of volcanic ash erupted from a vent about 3km above the site on the side of the valley Darwin's explanation remains valid today, except that the event is now dated to the Triassic, rather than Darwin's estimate of the much younger Cretaceous period.
• Raised Beach - Fossil coral reef forming the Red Sea's 10 metre raised beach of around 500,000 B.P., in the Ras Al Mohammed National Park, Egypt (about 15 km south of Sharm El Shaikh). The fossil reef compares very closely with the living present-day reef forming in the adjacent bay and coast

Paul Collinson (amateur) -

• SUN AND STRIATIONS - A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE NORTH SIDE OF GALWAY BAY. COUNTY GALWAY, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, SHOWING RAISED MINERAL VEINS AND POSSIBLE SMALL FAULT LINES CROSS-CUTTING IGNEOUS ROCKS.

Peter Matthews (artist) -

• The ocean moves through it # 1 -at low tide in the Atlantic Ocean, a 50 foot length of 8mm film is passed through two rocks, granite, and the film is marked by this creative geological action of the surface weathering. The image derives from the 8mm film is projected with the light revealing an array of geological marks and impressions.
• The ocean moves through it # 2 - ditto.

Ursula Lawrence (professional geologist) -

• Under Pressure - Folded Mylor slates, east of Porth Leven Cornwall
• Folded - Folded Mylor slates east of Porth Leven Cornwall

• Cooling Joints - Basalt columns in the roof of a cave, east of Vik Southern Iceland

Copyright - Hull Geological Society 2015

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