David Medalla

‘Water: A rising tide’

Cloud Canyons No.25 evokes aspects of a larger cycle: water combines with soap to create foam, it moves upwards, outwards, curling and arching, puddling before eventually evaporating. Like all matter, the sculpture is guided by the forces of temperature, gravity, atmospheric pressure and humidity, and is somewhat unpredictable. David Medalla has created many of these foam sculptures since the 1960s. Inspired by weather systems and biological processes, he sought to ‘create a work of art that would express and embody the motion of clouds’.

A photograph of a dark gallery space in which an installation made of tubes and foam trails bubbles through the space.

David Medalla / The Philippines/United Kingdom 1942–2020 / Cloud Canyons No.25 1963/2015 installed at GOMA for ‘Water’, December 2019 / Plexiglass tubing, motor pumps, water, detergent / Dimensions vary / Purchased 2014. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Estate of David Medalla / Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA