Where the Light Gets In, 2023, Pigment ink acrylic seawater on canvas, 140 X215cm

A World With No Horizon

A selection of these works was displayed at the National Art School Grad show, 2023.

I created the very large works in a massive courtyard in the National Art School, laying the canvas on the ground, pouring pigments and inks and imprinting various materials. In this collection, A World With No Horizon, I want to convey the swimmer’s feeling of being absorbed into an elemental force of nature and rather than being overwhelmed by it or needing to control this natural force, having its power infuse into you. 

As an ocean swimmer, I see the landscape from a moving viewpoint above a world with no horizon. So I find traditional western landscape concepts like a static viewer and a stable horizon line limiting. I don’t regard the idea of looking out through a fixed picture plane as realistic because we don’t see the world in such a static way, even when we’re not in the ocean.  Instead of being fixed in time and place, we are constantly looking around and shifting our viewpoint.

I’m also exploring the posthuman concepts of human embodiment in this watery world. Rather than humans being somehow apart from and alienated from the natural world, I see us as intimately interconnected.