Still in ‘Troubled Waters’, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan. (2013)
The key aspect of the exhibition Troubled Waters is a preoccupation with water; not only the troubled waters of the Mediterranean but water as a contested elemental commodity and a crucial means of energy, travel and trade that sustains our existence as a vital element. I visited the venue of the Kuandu Museum prior to the exhibition and was excited about the scale of the space. I decided to make transient large scale site-specific drawing of a Thames Sailing Barge using chalk from the River Thames shore line to draw with.
The installation was entitled Still, still in the sense of longing and desire for stillness and - as in a still photographic image - frozen in time. The large scale chalk drawing was a ship plan of the TSB Nautilus, now no longer in existence. The installation included a chart of the River Thames and a plumb line suspended from the ceiling of the gallery at the point where my own ship is moored.
At the end of the exhibition Troubled Waters my static chalk drawing was painted over - erased, a palimpsest of chalk and paint. I wondered if it had left an absent presence in the wake of its transient passing.
