Waterworks and Other Interventions
Kevin Costner's epic-hopeful film WaterWorld, 1995, was universally drubbed. While I will make no redeeming claims for the film itself, it does bring to bear a 'what-if scenario that holds imaginative sway. We do live on a water planet, an area that is naturally hostile to humankind, yet explorers and thrill-seekers brave it, holidayers flock to its edge, and according to mythologies, continents have disappeared into it. There is biological resonance- we are mostly water. Water also holds a fascination for artists and some day the definitive exhibition will be mounted. Or perhaps a refmed exhibition- moving past the marine paintings and seascapes dotted with anecdotal information- an exhibition that would or should include works by (say), Vija Celmins, Ian Grant, Hans Haacke, Kazuo Nakamura and Ted Victoria.1 It should be sponsored by a company (one of the many) that has not yet figured out how to sell us the air we breathe, but has come close enough. What is more ubiquitous than the urban pedestrian hugging and swilling a bottle of spring water: water as life and lifestyle. The water world is also a hot world- in some places. The lure for some artists is the very thing that cannot be depicted, hence the antipictorial. Water has a chemical base, H20, but no colour if untainted, and formless, yet forms the edge of our land and defines it. How to paint water without that shoreline, the anecdotal end? The water surfaces of Celmins's drawings and Grant's paintings have no horizon- no sense of 'out there ', as suggested in the last line of Water World. Costner's 'Mariner', having fmally found the elusive dry land, looks to the horizon and... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
lhor Holubizky is a free lance writer and curator living in Brisbane.