Last year in early summer, Alex Glasgow could be seen hauling up a long string of orangey-black seaweed on to the barge of his water farm, located off the west coast of Scotland near Skye. Growing on the farm was what Glasgow described as “perhaps the quickest-growing biomass on the planet”: seaweed.
The weed from Glasgow’s farm, KelpCrofters, is used in everything from soil fertiliser to artisanal soaps to glass-making and is part of a burgeoning industry – not just in Scotland, but around the world.
Some of the seaweed from that haul last summer, however, had a very particular purpose. It was made into ink to be used by 16 artists in a forthcoming exhibition that will raise money for WWF’s ocean conservation projects. The Guardian spoke to five of them to find out how they got on.
Antony Gormley: ‘The ink was like plough mud’
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