the submersion series encompasses a series of photographs and sculptural works referencing swimming pools, which I have been working over the last five years . I am especially interested in the play of safety and danger with which pools are charged and the ways in which they might read as spaces of the sublime, where control and loss are held in a precarious balance.

Rather than in social histories of swimming, as related to public health or leisure, I am drawn to the spatial and symbolic properties of pools and the psychological and psychological resonances to which these give rise.

These images were made in 2007 during a residency on the theme of 'imaginary Places' at Banff Arts Centre, Canada. They are primarily concerned with the ambiguous nature of the water’s surface.

As compared to the first set of images in the submersion series – shot at Tair Lair tidal pool in Scotland - in which a female figure offers a counterpoint to the landscape, suggestive of an interior space, here the body of the viewer provides an echo for the emptiness of the pool.

This series of photographs was taken in Scotland in 2005 while I was undertaking a research residency at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Aberdeenshire. For me the tidal character of the site is central to its potency, the gradual erosion of walls which previously contained and utilised the energies of the sea, seeming to physically and conceptually question ideas embodied in its modernist design; formulated in an era when drawing the lines between nature and culture seemed possible.

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This footage was shot at the Ideal Home exhibition and then re-edited. I am still fascinated by the endless character of the swimmer's endeavour, something that connects to some of my earlier performance works exploring the nature of tasks, often domestic in character, which of necessity must be repeated time and time again.

The other aspect of this piece by which I am preoccupied is the design of the pool itself - shaped to enhance the artificially generated current against which the swimmer is pitted, it has a geological dimension to it and has I think subliminally influenced both the work I am now doing with sea bed mapping and also the architectural models that form part of the submersion series.

The approach of the crowd to the edge of the tank, conjurers up the image of a 19th century fairground attraction, featuring the 'maiden in the tank', or something similar.

Hellespont is the former name of the Dardanelles, the strait of water that separates Europe from Asia. Legend has it that Leander would swim across nightly to meet with his beloved Hero who would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. One night the wind blew out Hero's light and Leander was drowned. Hero threw herself from the tower in grief and died as well. The poet, Lord Byron became the first known person to swim the Hellespont in 1810.