Waterscape
EXHIBITION: 12 - 18 MARCH 2020
CIRCUS ARTSPACE @ INVERNESS CREATIVE ACADEMY
Three artists, three journeys; from Paris to Inverness, from the top of a mountain to the sea and to the Arctic by boat. This exhibition explores water from different perspectives, using sculpture, video, sound installation and drawing.
In light of government advice and to help safeguard our team and visitors from the Covid-19 threat we shut this exhibition as of the 19 March and the closing event on 22 March was cancelled, however Marco Dessardo and Nicola Gear will shared site specific interventions online instead.
Marco Dessardo
Marco Dessardo will be bringing two boats to Inverness from his home in Paris; a wooden 'wave-canoe' built in France and tested in the North Sea and a new boat of sewn, recycled plastic that will be launched for the first time in the River Ness. As a sculptor Marco Dessardo knows the shape of waves, but does not know how to build boats, consequently the shape of the sculpture-boats resemble the shapes of moving water more than something designed for a marine environment. For this exhibition Marco Dessardo explores two different ideas; boats as sculptures in a gallery context and sculptures being used to explore moving water. After the opening event, Marco Dessardo will take to the water around Inverness aboard the sculpture-boats. The artist will adapt to the new challenges of this river and will document the performance/journeys and present the films at the closing event.
Nicola Gear
Nicola Gear lives on a boat, surrounded by water every day, her new sound work in this exhibition follows an audio journey from the top of a mountain to the sea. This descent maps different forms of water from ice, snow, rain, sweet and salt water. These different movements and moods of water shape human ingenuity in exploring mountainous landscapes. The words we use, and the echoes of adventure in our voices evoke the landscape, the physical exertion, glee and danger. Two sound tracks will work together in this installation; one filling the exhibition space with the ambient sound of weather and water and the second playing a mixed rhythm of voices telling of adventures, heard 'inside your head' through headphones. Between the opening and closing events the sound will change; the rhythm found in the drawings of Tracey Rowledge will re-structure the sound, and recordings from Marco Dessardo's performances will interweave the original sound track.
Tracey Rowledge
Tracey Rowledge made a series of drawings aboard the Grigory Mikheev ship whilst on the 2008 Cape Farewell expedition to Disko Bay, West Greenland. The sea, the weather and the movement of the boat combines with the movement of the artist's body to form these works. The artist's arm acts as a pendulum and the movement of the ship on the sea makes the marks. The drawings are made with coloured felt tips and submerged in the Arctic Sea water making the marks bleed as the dye moves on and through the paper. These drawings are quite literally of the sea, both by capturing the movement and embodying an emotional response to climate change. The journey is continuing in a subtle way; daylight changes and fades the colour in the drawings and they have never been placed in an exhibition before.