Tim continues teaching the 3D modelling software he uses. Today
our source was a bathythemetic map of the world. 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, 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.
the submersion series is a series of works related to
swimming pools that I have been working on for a number of years. I
am especially interested in the play of safety and danger with
which pools are charged and the ways in which they might be read as
spaces of the sublime, where control and abandon 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 resonances to which these
give rise.
Photographs and video grabs 2005-09
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.
Commissioned and Exhibited: Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall. 2001
Commissioned: Hull Time Based Arts. Exhibited: William Wilberforce Museum, Hull. 2002
Made up of forty separate electron miroscope scans (at a magnification of 200 x) of the inside of a pearl revealing the speck of dirt which had caused the oyster to generate it.
![s[H]elf I](/img/rl/h1/ffffff/666666/s%5BH%5Delf%20I.gif)
![s[H]elf I](/2009/02/01/peter-171x136.jpg)
Commissioned: Performulate. Exhibited: Cambridge Darkroom 1998
![s[H]elf II](/img/rl/h1/ffffff/666666/s%5BH%5Delf%20II.gif)
![s[H]elf II](/2009/01/16/windowcopy1-171x115.jpg)
Residency and Exhibition: La Chambre Blanche, Quebec City, Canda. 1999
Performance for camera, 1999 - Duration 11 minutes
Drawing on family experience of physical disability Hidden Seas /
Surface Waters attempted to articulate a body of difference, whose
boundaries remain physiologically and psychologically fluid,
inverting the characteristic function of light as a source of
'illumination'.
The use of silhouettes within the work references the 18th century
physiognomic experiments of James Lavater, who attempted to read
from the profile of his sitters their moral and spiritual 'nature'.
Supported by a London Arts Board - London Hybrids Research and
Development Award.
Production support Irish Museum of Modern Art and Arthouse,
Dublin.
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
A series of works in progress exhibited at Howard Gardens
Gallery, University of Wales Institute and The National
Oceanography Centre, Library, Southampton
Each marks an attempt to engage with processes of representing the
undersea world while providing a ounterpoint 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.
