SCREENING WALL

THOMAS MARCUSSON, CATHERINE HIGHAM, EMMA CRITCHLEY, KIM COLLMER, DANIEL CLAUZIER, PAUL PRUDENCE

THIS HEART OF ICE: THOMAS MARCUSSON
STILL LIFE: CATHERINE HIGHAM
SINGLE SHARED BREATH: EMMA CRITCHLEY
THE LIGHTHOUSE: KIM COLLMER
THE DELUGE: DANIEL CLAUZIER
HYDRO-ACOUSTIC STUDY: PAUL PRUDENCE

Screening Wall shows several short videoworks inspired by water, in a tableau of digital picture frames. The dreamlike qualities of water are drawn out in Daniel Clauzier’s The Deluge, which shows a slowly flooding still life. As the water rises, the candle goes out, objects float away, and the tablecloth billows. Referencing 17th century Dutch painting, and especially the theme of vanitas, the work shows water as both a source of fascination, and of destruction. Kim Collmer’s The Lighthouse draws the viewer through a meditative haze. It begins with a panorama of the horizon, tracing the perimeter of a lighthouse, before descending into underwater abstraction: ‘we go deeper into the structure of water as well as into ourselves, we become the ‘lighthouse’’. Emma Critchley’s Single Shared Breath, in which two submerged figures breathe into one another’s mouths, plays on the underwater space as one the human body can only temporarily inhabit, a fragile, transitory space. Thomas Marcusson’s Ice Heart, a beating, melting heart made of ice, alludes to ‘the fragile existence and vitality of ice in a world where the polar ice caps are slowly diminishing through a cyclical process’. Other works take in water as the subject of scientific research. Catherine Higham’s Still Life is a compilation of hundreds of still images of creeks around her home in Western Australia, tracking changes in water quality. Paul Prudence’s Hydro-Acoustic Study uses real-time algorithmic sound analysis techniques to create a simulated watery environment that responds to sound. The work speculates on future possibilities for the effects of sonic frequencies on water.