Remoulding the Landscape. Whitebox Gallery, QCA 2017
Remoulding the Landscape
An affinity for water in its many forms particularly melting ice, and the wider ecological, cultural and political impacts of our relationship with water, is the central focus for my research. I view its diverse characteristics and transformative qualities as a metaphor for my art practice as well as for the ephemeral nature of our existence.
At the core of my process-led practice is the aleatory action of allowing chance to enter the creative process. By actively incorporating aleatoric and random acts into my partnership of materials and environment, I then further respond to their temporal transformative outcomes.
My relationship with ice and flood has been accentuated this year as I live in the Northern Rivers, recently affected by the highest recorded flood levels in over 40 years. Later this year I will be travelling to the Arctic Circle to undertake an art residency. Thus, I feel a strong personal interconnection to this cycle of water and weather.
In this installation, I have worked with the properties of ink, melting ice, gravity, flood water and time to affect and transform paper. By creating large scale crushed monoprints on heavy weight paper and then placing ice, ink and floodwater onto them, the liquid finds its own gravity directed way through the folds and wrinkles leaving its mark. Once dry, the large-scale works are unfolded, creating a sculptural terrain of peaks and valleys, rips and tears, revealing the inner path of the water. There is a tension in the paper as it holds its shape, a sense of contraction as the memory within the fibres pulls in on itself, reforming after the influence of the artist’s actions.
The vibration of my slow rhythmic breath overlayed with the drip of ice melting is linked to the moving image of the expanding and contracting paper. The cycle of glacial ice melt to flood is an ever-present phenomenon in these times, by creating an installation environment I aim to draw the viewer in through this recognisable human sound, to contemplate our physical link to cause and effect on our planet.