Body of water

Abstract

Our attitude to the sea is dualistic: it is simultaneously a source of life and death, a vehicle which connects yet separates, and an invisible substance which contains life yet conceals it within. As Sublime Landscape, the sea prompts a state of bliss and terror, of fear and delight, as 'away-place', it becomes a location of exile and refuge. This investigation of my relations with the sea reflects an ongoing oceanic dialogue, of personal histories real and imagined, and attempts to chart the life-cycle beginning with diatomic life and ending with poetic visions of the sea. Within this lies a sense of return and endlessness, of liminality and transcendence. The images disclose my ongoing intimacy with the ocean, seeking to articulate a poetics of 'Undrowning', resurrection, love and loss. In an interrogation of contemporary sublime aesthetics, the meaningfulness of both gender and ecological politics within sublime aesthetics and culture are examined. The cycles of aquatic life reaching beyond the bounds of the ocean transform continuously. The endless voice of the sea speaks of things unknowable: Rilke's cliffs of the heart, for example, the inner ocean, the ineffable, journey and return. This body of work attempts to investigate a re-framing of the cultural understandings of the feminine relationship with the sea, of drowning, of passion and insanity, attempting perhaps, to elicit an undrowning, subverting these understandings towards a kind of empowered madness.