The Great Crochet Coral Reef

“Knitting,” a friend once explained to me, “is an act of defiance against the exploitative hegemony of corporate culture and its associated environmental destruction.” I nodded my head. ‘Mmm’ I replied. This is my most convincing interested noise. “Where’d this come from? And where’s it going?” I thought.

But, apparently, everyone knows that home made clothes are a surreptitious two-finger-salute to the High Street retailers. Even The Guardian’s on to it. Getting us to salve our eco-consciousnesses by making our own is old news. It’d work for me. If I was only allowed to wear what I’d knitted I’d never leave the house – no doubt vastly reducing my transport emissions.

But anyway. Knitting, well crochet actually, is back on the green agenda. Sidle past the queues for Psycho Buildings at The Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery and instead head upstairs to check out the mysteriously titled Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef.

Coordinating the project is the LA based Institute for Figuring, “an organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts”. It’s being run as part of International Year of the Reef, a campaign to highlight the threat of climate change and pollution to coral reefs, which are one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems.

Destruction of coral reefs is a serious issue, so surely no hyperbole? Ah, a simple error of diction. Actually hyperbolic space is a recognised mathematical model. As most people know, “hyperbolic n-space, denoted Hn, is the maximally symmetric, simply connected, n-dimensional Riemannian manifold with constant sectional curvature −1.”

Those without firm mental grasp of complex mathematics may wish to just trust Wikipedia on that one. Though crochet, I’m told, is a wonderful way to represent the hyperbolic space formulae in the physical world.

Mathematician or not, the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is beautiful, extremely thought provoking, and free. Unsurprisingly, it’s also a million times better than a shapeless, lint-ridden, hand knitted jumper.

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is at the Hayward Gallery Project Space until Sunday 17 August.