Whose Water are you? The Colour and Communication in nature!
Whose Water Are You? / Vems Vatten är du? (2011–ongoing)
Whose Water Are You? is a long-term, place-specific research artistic research project initiated by me in 2011. A process investigating water, colour and ecology through biochemical colour processes, scientific analysis, human experience and place specific research and bringing narratives and geography together. The work has developed after 10 years of my research on colour from plants and the chemical knowledge of plants.
I use plant materials as indicators and initiate biochemical colour processes. The same plant material is used with individually collected water samples. The different contents and properties of the water affect the processes and the colours that emerge. Water is a primary source for what colour becomes. These processes have also been investigated through analytical chemistry, including ESI-MS and ICP-OES, in collaboration with researchers at Uppsala University.
People are integral and one of the most important in the work. People living in the area for the work and exhibition participate by collecting water samples from places of their own choice, all from tapwater to wells, and rivers etc. and contribute their personal stories connected to that particular water. Each sample is documented and numbered, maintaining the relation between the individual, the water, its location and its story. Hundreds of samples can become part of a spatial installation that continues to transform through biochemical processes over several months. The installation is carefully built in the space, each glass form together with other glass many different spatial places where light can enter. The audience can then move within this glasses where colour changes through time.
The project has developed differently in each location through collaborations with museums, researchers, schools, municipalities and local communities, while remaining one continuous artistic investigation. It has been presented in Sweden, Finland and New Zealand. In New Zealand, the project also developed into film, extending the investigation of water, people, place and colour into another medium.
Tomelilla Konsthall
Tomelilla Konsthall, Sweden 2018
‘The work is place specific reseach and process-based with temporary installations, water and plants, development of site-specific matter that grows transforming these physical moments and playing with visions through transparency and translucency to create complex space shifting over time – where time and space are interventions of the contemporary. The environmental physics of life and all energy that is suspended and vibrating together in an enormous system. To create colour and change – a resonance of nature’s complexity, a sensitivity to natures rhythm, and mutations, light and our interconnection with all”
For more information see page Water as sacret
Whose Water are you?
Has been Tauranga New Zealand at Tauranga Art Gallery 2018. The outcomes of the colours in these projects and exhibitions are always different from one another depending on the space, water, land, people and sound. The cluster of installations is built depending on the room and the space. Aesthetic is very important for me. See more information on my website Water is life essential element
