Agonism / Antagonism is a new exhibition resulting from artist Neus Torres Tamarit’s residency in the laboratory of Dr Max Reuter, Reader in evolutionary genetics at UCL, and part of a long-term collaboration with computer scientist Ben Murray.
“Water takes a central place in my view of the world. It is the container of life and the connective element in the landscape.”
Siobhan McDonald is a visual artist working in the medium of paint, film and sound. She is interested in the changeable nature of landmass, historical events and their interconnection to time. Many of her works seek to merge the poetic and the scientific to delve into a field that’s unknown to her.
“My art is literally created by water, and imbued with its dynamics of movement, fluidity and flow, through my “floating colors” art-making process.”
Laura Ferguson has made her own body the subject of her art, finding beauty in a curving spine and exploring the connections between pain, consciousness, and creativity. “Floating on inner seas” will be part of a book-in-progress about her own art and the process of making it, ‘The Consciousness of the Body’.
“If we each have responsibility for our own safety, we also have responsibility for our own adventure. Each time we swim in a city river, we re-imagine our city from the inside. Our skin is a permeable boundary, letting in the water and the city, feeling the soft impact of the seasons and the water.”
Amy Sharrocks is a live artist, sculptor and film-maker who invites people to come on journeys in which their own experience, communication and expression are a vital part. She has making work about people and water for 10 years.
“A river is elusive: ever shifting, always moving, and in a constant state of flux. Is a river the water it contains or the channel through which it flows; or is it essentially a self-replicating memory? My work centers on the many facets of water: as a subject, a material, and an experience. I am looking for the ephemeral, sublime, and perceptually mysterious.”
David Teeple is a multidisciplinary artist using glass, water, and light to create formally simple yet perceptually complex works.
Susan Derges has established an international reputation through her practice involving cameraless, lens-based, digital and reinvented photographic processes, encompassing subject matter informed by the physical and biological sciences as well as landscape and abstraction. Her art comprises an ongoing enquiry into the relationship of the self to the observed.
“The idea of interconnectedness has been one of the central themes of my water work for over forty years. Water issues are vast and present intricately complex problems. I think that the solutions and suggestions for actions lie in a diversity of approaches. It will take all of us working together cooperatively to come to the assistance of bodies of water around the globe. In this radically interconnected world it behooves each of us to compassionately take care of each other and our environment, because we are one and the same.”
In her pioneering inter-disciplinary practice, Basia Irland focusses on rivers and watersheds, water scarcity, climate change, ecological restoration and waterborne diseases. Her poetic, socially-engaged work endeavours to reconnect people with their local waterways in order to foster care, appreciation and responsibility.
Curated by arts collective Shrinking Space, who have previously worked with the likes of Somerset House and the Science Gallery London, The Wonder Project will encompass specially commissioned soundscapes, sculptures and artworks from a roster of esteemed UK artists and creative studios. Audiences will meander through Wakehurst’s woods, meadows and glades to interact with installations embedded into the landscape. The Wonder Project will encourage people to step out of their comfort zones, step away from their go-to-responses to any given situation, and attempt to wonder about where they find themselves in a new light.
Visualogical is both an interactive digital art workshop and a novel system of social investigation, developed by artist Victoria Westerman and curator Natasha Gertler.
By harnessing the power of group collaboration and artificial intelligence, Visualogical hacks into the visual subconscious of participants and allows them to illustrate it with regards to a chosen theme.
Artist and writer, Richard Bright, has addressed the relationship between art, science and consciousness for over 30 years. In his recent series of drawings he explores the impermanent and shifting process of time.