Deep
‘Water’
Water links us to past generations, like a layered timeline or the spiralling double-helix structure of DNA. Aeotearoa New Zealand collective Mata Aho’s monumental Kiko Moana 2017 rises as if from the depths, representing the sea as vast and vivid, a rippling body of blue. The artists give tactile form to the Māori conception of taniwha, spiritual entities living in water. Joyce Campbell captures the elusive quality of the female water spirit Hinekōrako in Te Taniwha 2010–12, using the early photographic medium of daguerreotype to trace her transformation from woman to eel in the fast-moving waters of the Wairoa River.
Installation view of work by Mata Aho Collective (Aotearoa New Zealand est. 2012 / Kiko Moana 2017 / Polythene tarpaulin cotton thread / Collection: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington), with photographs by Trevor Paglen (United States b.1974 / © Trevor Paglen / Courtesy: The artist and Metro Pictures, New York) in the background / Photograph: N Harth, QAGOMA
Brisbane-based artist Judy Watson acknowledges the creative power of the rainbow serpent Boodjamulla in the dappled blue, ochre and indigo hues of her painting wanami 2019, maintaining her connection to the life-giving waters of her mother’s country around Lawn Hill Gorge, in north-west Queensland.
Far from the light of the sun, the depths of the ocean embody a kind of unconscious. Martina Amati brings her love of freediving to the film Under (Depth) 2015, where a guide line stretches before the diver like an umbilical cord, or ladder into the deep. Trevor Paglen’s Undersea cables 2015–16 offer an unexpected portrait of the internet. Each photograph locates a site that was tapped by government agencies, and the long cables laid across the ocean floor are a reminder of the physicality of information networks. Such pulsing relays of data connect us, as if to create a larger, partially sentient organism.
List of works: Deep
