Turbulence

Paint Room

Turbulence comprises a family of works – live audiovisual, video and light installation in concert with text-based works – to reflect on the physicality of marine and weather systems, the psychology of ocean voyage, and the narratives of conflict and displacement that are generated by the Diamantina in the present day. Turbulence, as a term with both a specific scientific definition and socio-political resonance, offers an opportunity to pry into the juncture between media, metaphor and meaning. In the audiovisual piece, the spectator’s movement generates a primitivistic ripple effect, which echoes in the abstracted imagery of environmental catastrophe in the looping video work and ‘frozen animation’ frames posted on the wall of the space. In the deepest recesses of the Paint Lamp Room, light refracts from Mylar to expose the hidden depths of one of the darkest cavities on the ship. All are infused with a sensibility of primal geometry, differently realised in digital and analogue versions of endless permutation and eternal return. As a series of studies in varying media staged in one of the ship’s furthest extremities, Turbulence meditates simultaneously on the agoraphobia of open water and the unsettling chaos of environmental turbulence, and communicates the fear, isolation and disorientation of those who’ve come across the seas.