The Catchments Project

The Catchments Project: Artists in Residence - Debbie Symons + Jasmine Targett, Creative Spaces: Carlton Connect Studio LAB-14. February – June 2015. Exhibition: April 30th – 16th May 2015.

The Catchments Project

by Emma Mayall, Curator National Gallery Victoria.

From what fount is the sea replenished by its native springs and the streams that flow into it from afar?

- Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe[1]

Water is a substance that is, even now, all too often taken for granted in the developed world. Despite our increasing awareness of its preciousness and best intentions to be watchful of our consumption levels, it is still easy to convince ourselves that there is an invisible, mythical and seemingly endless ‘fount’ that supplies us with this essential element. Enough, it seems, to replenish the sea over and over, and satisfy an insatiable human thirst.

In our contemporary lives we have been forced to confront the reality of environmental degradation, pollution and depleting resources. Water conservation is one such pressing environmental issue that we as a community must be held accountable for – as consumers we are complicit in the use and misuse of this vital resource. Whilst the broader scientific community have continued to debate the manifold implications of climate change and human impact on the environment over many years, it is artists who are now taking the lead in promoting awareness of climate science and engendering the cultural shift that is required to initiate positive change.  

In recent times there has be a strong movement towards interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between the arts and sciences, within the context of climate and the environment. Whilst the natural world has occupied artists for millennia, from the representational to the Sublime to the abstract, this new movement focuses more specifically on a mutual exchange of ideas, data, concepts, philosophies and factual records between artists and scientists to address important contemporary issues that affect all humanity.  

In their latest body of work The Catchments Project, artists Debbie Symons and Jasmine Targett have been positioned amongst scientists, researchers, academics and entrepreneurs who are addressing the multifaceted issues surrounding environmental sustainability in the context of reduced rainfall and drought. Awarded the first Artist in Residency at Creative Spaces: Carlton Connect Studio, an initiative of the City of Melbourne, Symons and Targett have devised three research-based works Making Water Visible, The Water Harvest and Getting Busy as a way of envisioning and augmenting the significance of Melbourne’s waterways and catchments in the broader public mind. Their intention is to make water, and the engineered and natural mechanisms that supply us with water, clearly visible.

The luminescent sculptural complexity of Making Water Visible maps Melbourne’s existing natural water catchments, incorporating multiple iridescent layers of Perspex to form a topographical representation of this usually unseen network or resources that supply us with water. The data for this map has been collated with contributions from the City of Melbourne, Visualising Victoria’s Ground Water and The University of Melbourne demonstrating the benefit of mutual collaboration between the sciences, industry and the arts in calling attention to pressing global climate change issues. Delicately hand crafted from perspex and mirror, the map shimmers and comes to life giving a sense that our water is a living organism that supports life within Melbourne; similar to the nervous system of the human body.

The Water Harvest is a socially engaged installation that represents Melbourne’s engineered water catchments. Locals were invited to contribute their own grey or rain water to the installation and were gifted their bottles at the conclusion of the project as a reminder that a collective approach to natural resource conservation is crucial if we are to enact, activate and adapt. These bottles are artefacts that stand as markers for a united initiative of change on a significant scale within the community.

Getting Busy ingeniously and playfully draws the public’s attention to water pollution issues in Melbourne’s waterways and asks them to be an active contributor to the solution through pledging practical everyday actions to support their local environment.

As I collected a grey water sample from my own home to contribute to The Water Harvest, I reflected on the fact that despite my abiding and firm commitment to water conservation, I too often take this vital element for granted. With artists such as Symons and Targett working alongside scientists to create critical work such as The Catchments Project, we are as individuals and community members, at a local and global scale, called to task and encouraged to incorporate positive strategies that contribute to environmental sustainability within our daily lives.

Emma Mayall

About the artists

In The Catchments Project Melbourne based artists Debbie Symons and Jasmine Targett have researched how humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets surrounding water. Their understanding is that these actions will in part define our collective future in the 21st century. Making Water Visible, The Water Harvest and Getting Busy demonstrate how natural resources and man made catchments can work together to conserve our water within one “super-ecological” system.

This research challenges and explores the complexity of The City of Melbourne’s climate change adaptation studies, surrounding reduced rainfall and drought. The works were developed during the artists’ residency at the Creative Spaces: Carlton Connect Studio LAB-14. Creative Spaces is a program of the City of Melbourne’s Arts and Culture branch.

The artists’ practices are sustained by significant research collaborations with scientists and environmental data organisations. The conceptual underpinnings of their work complement one another. Symons’ work is politically charged, discussing the moral and ethical consequences of ecological decisions. Targett’s seemingly beautiful and intricately crafted works chart landmarks of anthropocentric disaster that cannot be found on any atlas or world map.

These artists explore dark wonders of the natural world offer an insight into a ‘super ecology’ in which the natural and artificial have become inextricably linked within one natural system: An ecosystem of universal proportions from which no part is immune from the changes of its counterparts. Symons and Targett have worked closely with one another for some years, collaboratively producing four award-winning bodies of work.

[1] Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of the Universe, trans R. E. Latham, London: Penguin Books, 1994, p.15.