“A key aspect of the exhibition ‘Troubled Waters’ is a preoccupation with water, its relationship to the land, and in particular how it has become a focus for global concerns about the environment. There is little doubt that the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change, in the last three decades, can be seen in the rapidly changing nature of water evidenced through the melting ice caps, the rising and warming of the sea, high levels of pollution and contamination through our irresponsible attitudes to managing industrial waste. The natural world is showing signs of extreme distress as a direct consequence of our actions, with increase of severe storms and at the other end of the weather spectrum, sustained periods of drought and the lack of water as the world’s climatic order changes. Water is therefore often a contested elemental commodity in that it defines and divides territories and is often the specific site and focus of human conflict, throughout history as well as in the present. Water provides a crucial means of energy, of travel and trade, a source of food from our seas and rivers and sustains our existence as a vital element in our human biological and chemical makeup. It continues to be the most valuable and increasingly unstable resource on earth.
The term ‘Troubled Waters’ also indicates in the context of this exhibition, a more metaphorical view of conflict and of contradiction. Aspects of heritage, history, representation, cultural discourse and our relationship to means of production are explored in the work of the five artists and their accompanying texts.”