Linked but not!

This week I spent two days in Dublin participating in a workshop that was a mixture of research, inquiry,  review and it was thought provoking. I'll blog more about that over on my http://Creativedynamic.blogspot.com when it filters a bit more. Here I wanted to talk about the two exhibitions that I saw.
I recently came across a quote via twitter that stated "making unusual connections is the basis of creativity" Ellen Galinsky. I think that is true.
The first exhibition I saw on Tuesday evening was at the Science Gallery a rocking 'museum', funky space where science, art and technology converge to inform, present, educate, raise interest and more. The HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF exhibition is fascinating. Along with the fact it is a traditional craft form, it's application to a science and sustainability setting plus the community aspect of the project is exactly the kind of work I get. If you live in Dublin you have got to go see this exhibition. I love the 'second life for rubbish' aspect to the project also where the toxic reef has non organic and less then traditional materials of plastic used. 
"A major element of the Crochet Coral Reef Project is its ‘plastic component’ which responds to this crisis. Where the yarn-based Reefs serve as a handicraftplastic sand. In the northern invocation of the living beauty of actual reefs, so the “Toxic Reef” is a wildly proliferating agglomeration of yarn and plastic trash. It is the ‘evil’ 21st century twin to the classical finesse of the yarn Reefs. To put this into temporal terms, we might say that where the yarn Reefs represent the past, and the exquisite creations of nature, the plastic looks to the future and to the destructive tendencies of humanity."
Good exhibition to take children to also.
The second exhibition I went to see was Gary Coyle RHA, At Sea. I remember the first time I saw Gary Coyles work and instantly like it. The exhibition close on Saturday but if you can make the effort to see it do. I would live happily with any of the 'lovely water' series. Even the ones where the sea was obviously not lovely. i purchased the book from the exhibition and as I took the train home found my self reading his words about the project and the train moved by the location that they were taken. I know the area well as I lived there at some point. His drawings were interesting and the use of the drawn frame around the charcoal ones added something significant. But they do not reach that place of the photography. The swimming diaries have a documentary and anthropological aspect to them.
The link between the two projects is the sea but the mediums and ambitions of both exhibitions and projects are very far apart. The exhibition also linked to the training I attended metaphors or the sea and blue ocean spaces, underwater, some talked about 'tapestries' and strands.
It is more to do with the link I made to this work in my head and the dialogue between the training and the visual and social reference points. I'm rushing to get out the door. Perhaps more on this later.