BAC and Gotland Art Museum are pleased to present Tuula Närhinen's exhibition The Reef Atlas, which can be seen in the entrance and staircases of Fornsalen in Visby. The exhibition is part of the artist's research on Gotland, which took place within the framework of BAC's and Gotland Museum's collaborative project The Art of Heritage. Tuula Närhinen's art project focuses on Gotland's limestone and the cycles of sedimentation and erosion that constantly build up and wear down the rocks on the island's beaches. Parallel to this ancient process is the culture of human beings, who build and carve their memories in stone. Also these are worn away and turned into ruins with inscriptions erased by time.

The Reef Atlas is Tuula Närhinen's attempt to visualise the fossil flora of the ancient seabed. Starting from the limestone floor of Fornsalen, the artist has traced and drawn the outlines of million-year-old tropical coral reefs by mapping the fossils visible in the museum's floor tiles. The artist's drawings highlight and bring to life a world right beneath our feet that we would otherwise only notice if it were framed by a museum display. History is all around us - we need culture and museums as magnifying glasses to see and interpret it in all its detail.

To share Gotland's natural history and limestone-related culture with other interested artists outside Gotland, Tuula Närhinen has created the digital platform Gotland's Lithological Society. Here she has published her own documentation of exciting rocks, sediments and fossils from Gotland, as well as her own artistic creations in the form of drawings from The Reef Atlas.

The artist has also created the workshop programme Whispers from the Past - a celebration of runic writing on Gotland. The workshop gives pupils from Wisby gymnasium the opportunity to eavesdrop on messages from the past by hunting for runic writings in churches on Gotland together with archaeologist Per Widerström from Gotland Museum and runic expert Magnus Källström from the National Heritage Board. The pupils will also have the opportunity to learn the basics of runic writing with history teacher Jonas Åberg and to try their hand at creating runic graffiti using natural ingredients such as twigs and pine needles on abandoned limestone blocks in the Visby church ruins.