The Upwelling Festival celebrates a natural phenomenon - the bonney upwelling - which happens around this time each year when the winds off the coast change direction causing the currents to pick up nutrients from the sea floor leading to a kind of feeding frenzy in the ocean.
Artist Catherine Bailey describes it as a kind of 'ecological fairyland'.
It's also been the source of a large sculptural piece she's been creating in partnership with various local community groups called What Lies Beneath which will form a part of the Upwelling Festival this Saturday.
Over the past few months Catherine and a group of helpers have been collecting various pieces of flotsam and jetsam while walking around Portland's coastline, and these items have gone on to form the basis of a huge array of artworks inspired by various forms of sea life.
Some pieces directly resemble creatures such as seals, while others are more oblique takes on animals like jellyfish.
It's quite amazing to see the array of objects which have been collected and used - colanders, plastic bags, floats, and all sorts of pieces of rubbish have been sorted by colour and then used to make the works which will hang from a hammock suspended three meters off the ground.
The hammock has been constructed from 12 pack rings - the plastic loops which hold slabs of beer together, and which are normally considered the enemy of much marine life.
In using the rings Catherine was initially harking back to a childhood memory of collecting six pack rings which her mother then sewed together to make a hammock.
The one Catherine has created is a bit larger however and will be about 15 meters long. It also of course comments on the dangers of these materials to marine life.
Weather permitting, the hammock and various artworks will be installed on Saturday morning down on the foreshore near the festival site in Portland.
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