Exhibition eBook
Today I’m sharing an excerpt of the exhibition book, created in advance of my Venice Biennale exhibition Where Once the Waters. The book will be, in its own right, a key part of the project I’ve been working on over the last few years – a place to present the ideas that have driven the work. The artwork photographs, for example, go beyond simple documentation, with some paintings set against textures of industrial steel doors in metalworks and factories or placed upon the upturned hulls of abandoned and disintegrating fibreglass boats, found along the shoreline, hinting at issues of pollution and over-consumption. The book’s texts have been placed to suggest a journey, from the Outer Hebrides (the location of my previous exhibition Horizon Rising at Taigh Chearsabhagh Arts Centre) to Venice, with hundreds of virtual stops at coastlines in between.
The overriding theme of the book – and indeed the exhibition as a whole – is sea level rise. To be more specific, localised variations in sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate warming. In this project, I’m attempting to “bring home” a globally significant issue, by offering personalised and relatable figures, and intimately presenting artworks that encourage discussion on an issue which will touch us all.
The digital version features sample texts, and selected artworks from the two installation pieces created for Venice. A hardcopy is scheduled for late August / early September 2022, and will provide a more comprehensive summary of the exhibition after its conclusion.
Text by: Becky Campbell, Patricia Emison, David Gange & Kate Reeve-Edwards
“There is no better distillation of these messages and their aesthetic power than the art of David Cass.”
“The exhibition makes concrete our need for purposefulness, our need to protect a delicate symbiosis with the planet.”
“Through art, scientific data can be presented in an engaging way; it is a mobilising medium.”