journals exploring fluidity and conversation

Images on this page are taken from a number of A3 and A4 sized art journals (2003 - 2007) exploring ideas around fluidity and conversation. They are not in sequence as the journals were not worked in sequentially. Ideas would ebb and flow and be returned to over and over allowing for an immersion in concepts born out of this slow, meditative process connected to themes pursued over many years on the level of sensation, feeling and intellect. 


During 2000 - 2007 swimming in the Newcastle Ocean Baths and Merewether Ocean Baths, on the NSW coast, was a frequent pastime full of opportunities for observation and reflection.  Often it was underwater swimming which provided the most exciting yet fluctuating visual stimulus  The experience was simultaneously one of pure physical sensations sparking ideas for visual response, and emotionally affecting with the ambience of the place shaped by the constantly shifting atmosphere of light on water, time of day, weather conditions and such variations. 


Lastly, but importantly, the act of swimming in these locations - massive manmade public swimming pools sited on rock platforms beside the Pacific Ocean - was a curious prompt for intellectual engagement with the concept of fluidity, a notion with potent meanings and nuances considering the complex contemporary world and the velocity of change we are forced to navigate at this time. Navigating the 'much-ness of the now' calls for a certain adeptness and the quality of engagement most suited to this extraordinary time perhaps could be said to be a fluidity. My journals were the place I took these ponderings - working with visualisations of a whole range of related concepts... complexity, change, chaos, velocity, fluidity, navigating, allowing, shifting, form-lessness and form, ebb and flow.


These Ocean Pools had the effect of prompting a unique visual language, which, on reflection years later, are still somewhat evident in later work on seeds. The Newcastle journal work was the place where concepts were laid as foundations of the work to come later.