Broadcast in Britain daily, the hypnotic sound of the shipping forecast is intoned on the radio much like an exotic mantra, exerting a hold on the poetic imagination and inspiring Linda Sgoluppi to create a body of work by the same name. Cross-currents and undulations in Sgoluppi's paintings create surface tension, a tension that reflects the imagined state of sea and firmament during the period covered by one of the forecasts; the colours reflect the imagined experience of being open to the elements in one of the these shipping areas.

Liberties were taken with the Forecast itself, Sgoluppi mentally extended it to include the poetic named sea areas that are adjacent but beyond the areas covered by the normal broadcasts. The personal additions to the usual forecast play through her imagination and she mentally ‘hears’ the usual forecast intonation, so that the additions continue with these extra sea mapped areas. ‘There are warnings of gales in Horse, Chaucer and Ridge …’.

The Shipping Forecast can be heard on BBC Radio 4 Long wave each evening at 5:54 pm.

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