Rona Lee: Topics

Marshall St - 2007

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.

Images taken at NOCS and other underwater facillites over the last four years

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.

These images made in the centre's jacuzzi touch playfully upon what Thomas van Leeuwen (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=4722) has refered to as the dark side of the pool

In order to gain access to the pool these images were shot late at night when it was empty and the filtration pumps turned off - never the less, however long I waited, the surface was never entirely still - always resisting and in some degree reflecting back the attempts of the lens to look through and beyond it.

Tim continues teaching about the 3D modelling software he uses. Today our source was a bathythemetic map of the world and while showing me various functions he pointed out that the programme had calculated that in approximate terms the mean height / depth - depending on how you view it - of the Earth’s surface is 1424 metres below sea level!

A statistic which for a moment held us both rapt and bringing home afresh the extent to which the sea, rather than earth, dominates the surface of the planet.

The most common height above sea level is 85 metres and the least 3,3800 metres below.

Topics:

Posted Monday 24th November, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Commissioned and Exhibited: Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall. 2001

Commissioned: Hull Time Based Arts. Exhibited: William Wilberforce Museum, Hull. 2002

Commissioned: Performulate. Exhibited: Cambridge Darkroom 1998

Residency and Exhibition: La Chambre Blanche, Quebec City, Canda. 1999

Residency and screening: Irish Musueum of Modern Art, Dublin. 1999

Exhibited Spacex, Exeter. 2003

Exhibited: Museum of Installation, London. 2000

Exhibited: Dartington Arts Devon 2000

MAPPING exhibition (Nov 13th - Dec 11th 09)

A series of works in progress, generated at the National Oceanography Centre, where I am currently Leverhulme Artist in Residence, exhibited as part of a group show on Mapping at Howard Gardens Gallery, University of Wales Institute.

Each marks an attempt to engage with processes of representing the undersea world while providing a counterpoint to the virtual and optical emphasis of scientific methods. Seeking ways of 'knowing', centred upon the imagination, desire, the body and touch, capable of resisting the separation of subject and object demanded by the use of observation as a way of encountering the world.

Gallery Talk - Dr Tim Le Bas (NOCS) and Rona Lee discuss their current project Truthing Gap exploring methods of visualising and modelling the emergent landscape of the deep sea bed. Chaired by Dr Clive Cazeaux