Print of 'The Elephant Bed' by John Grade

210 x 297mm (including white border)

C-type print on matt paper

Photographic print of 'The Elephant Bed' by John Grade at Fabrica Gallery 2009. 

In his first UK exhibition, John Grade created The Elephant Bed, a monolithic interpretation of the life-cycle of the coccolithophore. Billions of these invisible algae congregate just beneath the surface of the world’s oceans and, when they die, their protective outer casings drift down to add to thick sedimentary layers on the seabed. At the end of the Ice Age, one such strip of shale and sand washed down from the Sussex Downs, eventually compacting into the bedrock, the Elephant Bed, below modern Brighton and Hove.