Kurt Jackson

Bass Boys
mixed media on canvas

Kurt Jackson’s work often revolves around an environmental agenda and people’s connection to the world they live and work in.

In 2005 he accompanied Greenpeace on their ship, Esperanza, to witness the bass pair trawlers and the by-catch of dolphins. Around the same time he became aware that the Cornish fishing industry was now promoting the traditional and sustainable method of handline fishing. The ‘bass boys’ work largely alone in small punts out of the coves and harbours of Cornwall; individual fishermen like Richard Matthews of Penberth have their own tag numbers, allowing fish bought to be traceable.

The accompanying drawings and film represent both methods of fishing; contrasting and raising the issue of sustainability, but within the arenas of tradition and cultural change. It seems extraordinary that not only has handline fishing survived the new technologies and industrial approach to fishing but also that handline fishing is now seen as more relevant to the twenty first century environmental debate.

In the Newlyn School heyday fishing was seen in a romantic and aesthetic context, depicting the seine fishing with large numbers of the community involved. Only occasionally was the more mundane handline fishing shown, as in Harold Harvey’s ‘In the Whiting Ground’.