Exhibitions2015Watershed: Art, play and the politics of water

Watershed was an exhibition at Hall Place & Gardens, Bexley, bringing together some 15 contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tania Kovats, Tatsuo Miyajima and Martin Parr who looked at water in playful, conceptual, political and meditative ways.

Through photography, sculpture, video and installations, the exhibition celebrated the precious resource of water. Gavin Turk’s Self Portrait (2012) uses the element to playfully subvert and combine traditions of self-portraiture and sculpture; the restful nature of water is captured in Korean artist Chang Kyum Kim’s meditative sculptural video projection, showing the changing seasons in a projected pond; Massimo Vitali’s monumental landscape photograph shows the pleasure of being around water in nature. In Noémie Goudal’s large scale photograph Cascade (2009), a plastic sheet replaces the pouring water; Tania Kovats’ glass and water sculpture Where Seas Meet is made with sea water from three places around the world where seas visibly meet; in David Buckland’s photographs of Ice Texts, words of warning are projected on to icebergs; Susan Derges captures the continuous movement of water by immersing photographic paper directly onto rivers or shorelines; and Martin Parr candidly documents the English at the seaside.