The Uncertain Nature of Water was made with the assistance of the Rupert Bunny Foundation when I became the inaugural Fellowship winner in 2006. Super8 films of Port Phillip bay water are projected onto large cupped glass dishes from above creating a simulated ocean inside the gallery space.
This project aimed to question our relationship to nature and to the museum. Given that 'nature' is largely constructed to conform to cultural ideals, a constantly surging dish of fictional ocean water could feasibly be a reasonable substitute for authenticity.
Working with the familiar metaphor of water as time, the viewer watches looped footage of the surging ocean. Waves form and reform as the viewer watches an exact moment repeat itself. While nostalgia offers comfort it ultimately denies growth, therefore one must force oneself away, one must break the reverie and go outside back into the daylight. The escape offered by the fictional ocean is therefore revealed to be illusory.
This project aimed to question our relationship to nature and to the museum. Given that 'nature' is largely constructed to conform to cultural ideals, a constantly surging dish of fictional ocean water could feasibly be a reasonable substitute for authenticity.
Working with the familiar metaphor of water as time, the viewer watches looped footage of the surging ocean. Waves form and reform as the viewer watches an exact moment repeat itself. While nostalgia offers comfort it ultimately denies growth, therefore one must force oneself away, one must break the reverie and go outside back into the daylight. The escape offered by the fictional ocean is therefore revealed to be illusory.
