David Cass (b. 1988, Edinburgh) is an artist best known for his environmentally themed projects using found and recycled materials. His subject over the last decade has been the sea, and in recent years, the issue of sea rise. We know that sea levels around the world are climbing. However, due to various factors, the rate of rise from coast to coast is not even. Some locations – such as Venice, or the east coast of the USA – are experiencing more dramatic fluctuations in sea level and more frequent inundation.

The two polyptychs presented during Cass’ 2022 Biennale exhibition illustrated our changing sea. On one gallery wall, the artist presented 365 painted metal tins – a snapshot of a year at sea – while the wall opposite this explored a longer timeframe, telling us through a series of typed letters, how much the seas nearest our birthplaces have risen during our lifetimes.*

Today, almost 1000 letters have been produced to form this principal artwork, speaking of coastlines retreating, eroding, sinking and even lifting, offering figures (measurements) we can visualise, often because the level of change described might be contained within the sheet of paper the letter is typed upon. Knowing what is happening at coastlines we are connected to allows us to engage with a topic so often shrouded in complex science, or average global figures not specific to any one place.

While the artist has typed onto the ephemeral paperwork of life: correspondences, birth certificates, documents, wills, deeds; he has painted onto the seemingly insignificant objects we’ve lived with. In these pieces, the artist has used small, overlooked items, yet those which are integral parts of everyday living. Here, Cass has described a shifting horizon line – using that division between sea and sky to indicate fluctuations in water level. The decision to paint 365 references this period of record-breaking annual ocean temperatures.

Both works in this ongoing and evolving project invite the viewer in. They speak personally to us, perhaps hoping that by offering points of entry and accessible data, a globally significant issue might be brought home. You can take part in a future version of the letter project here.

*Please note that this is a creative project – it does not aim to offer scientific guidance

David Cass (nato nel 1988, Edimburgo) è un artista conosciuto soprattutto per i suoi progetti a tema ambientale che utilizzano materiali ritrovati e riciclati. Il suo soggetto principale nell'ultimo decennio è stato il mare e, più recentemente, la questione dell'innalzamento del suo livello. Il livello del mare in tutto il mondo sta salendo. Tuttavia, a causa di vari fattori, il tasso di aumento da costa a costa non è uniforme. Alcune località – Venezia, ad esempio – stanno vivendo fluttuazioni più drammatiche ed inondazioni più frequenti.

Su due pareti, le due opere presentate in questa mostra si univano per illustrare un mare mutevole. Mentre le 365 lattine di metallo su questa parete potevano essere l'istantanea dipinta di un anno in mare, la parete di fronte esplorava un lasso di tempo più lungo, suggerendoci di quanto i mari più vicini ai nostri luoghi di nascita sono aumentati nel corso della nostra vita.*

Composto da ~1000 lettere dattiloscritte, il progetto parlava di coste che si ritirano, si erodono, sprofondano e, addirittura, si sollevano. Le lettere aiutavano a visualizzare numeri, spesso perché il livello di cambiamento del mare è comparabile al foglio di carta su cui la lettera stessa è scritta. Sapere cosa sta succedendo sulle coste a cui siamo connessi ci consente di interessarci in un argomento così spesso avvolto in una scienza complessa.

Mentre l'artista ha dattiloscritto sulle scartoffie effimere della vita: corrispondenze, certificati di nascita, testamenti, atti; egli ha dipinto sugli oggetti apparentemente insignificanti con cui abbiamo vissuto. Ha scelto oggetti piccoli e trascurati, ma vitali per la nostra vita quotidiana. In questa serie, Cass, ha semplicemente dipinto una linea di orizzonte mutevole – usando quella divisione tra mare e cielo per indicare le fluttuazioni del livello dell'acqua.

In entrambe le opera, Cass invitava gli spettatori ad entrare, parlando direttamente con noi, auspicando forse che offrendo punti d’accesso e dati comprensibili, si poteva dar risalto ad una questione significativa per tutto il mondo. “La mostra rende concreto il nostro bisogno di significato, il nostro bisogno di proteggere una delicata simbiosi con il pianeta,” scrive la storica dell’arte Patricia Emison. La mostra è chiusa, ma il progetto continua.

On two walls, two oceans…

Kate Reeve-Edwards on the Venice Biennale Exhibition | Spring 2022

One, a rippling anthology of 600 letters, cresting on the breeze from an open door. The other, a swell of 365 different seas, sounds, gulfs, bays and channels, painted onto repurposed vintage tins.

Both pieces hold a shared narrative: a love letter to our oceans, a plea to respond to rising sea levels.

Both walls are created from a plethora of minute, individual narratives. Each letter contains a story of sea rise mapped across the participants’ lifetimes. Each painting contains a different body of water, where the horizon line, time of day, and weather conditions vary in every unique view.

Both forms are containers. The tins, receptacles for past objects and vessels for new painted histories. The letters, capsules of time and tidelines, likewise are jeroboams of potential action and activism.

The large and the minute, the collective and the individual. These two states at once make the issue of rising sea levels a global and intimate problem.

David Cass’s prior work has been building up, like an oncoming swell, to this exhibition. The artist first became captivated by the flux of water in Florence, where he travelled on a Royal Scottish Academy scholarship. He noticed the clockwork rhythm of the autumnal arriving of rain, which frequently bloated the Arno with the possibility of flood. The 1966 Florence flood marked the city forevermore with traces of disaster: the deluge is etched into the city’s foundations in the form of plaques denoting water levels above head height, and aqueous tidelines have left, in hidden stone places, traces of an oily residue. The Florence flood became, for Cass, a tool to explore contemporary episodes of flooding: it became a symbol of warning.

His research in Florence naturally took him to Venice, where flood lines also exist in the form of plaques and the green algae which recounts the levels the waters rest at today. As the city sinks, the buildings, once built in harmony with the levels of the lagoon, have been adapted. Doors which once led directly out to the canals have been cropped or bricked up, their inhabitants moved either up or out.

Venice has visual warnings of oncoming flood etched into its architecture. Linear marks of oncoming sea rise imprint themselves on the city as an admonition. For Cass, Venice is a fitting place to present an exhibition concerned with rising sea levels.

Although most of Cass’s work has been environmentally charged, he wanted this show to focus in on a specific aspect of our changing planet. Over the last three years, the artist has held discussions with several experts in the field concerning sea level rise across the last century, including Prof. Dave Reay, chair of Carbon Management at Edinburgh University, and his previous collaborator, the oceanographer John Englander. These individuals (alongside others listed in the exhibition book) have aided in Cass’s research, offering guidance and support.

Asking volunteers to offer up their birthplace and date of birth, conceptually tightened Cass’s idea. As many different people from around the globe took part, it offered up a worldwide view of sea rise. The typical data we are presented with is that the global mean sea level has risen 21–24 centimetres since 1880, but this average figure doesn’t tell the whole story, far from it. Some places are experiencing a more dramatic rate of rise year-on-year than others. By mapping sea level changes across a person’s whole lifetime and attaching this rise to the place of their birth, the change feels more visceral. Both you and the waters have grown with time.

Installed, the letters act as a kind of kinetic wall sculpture; all the sheets overlapping to create a united, rustling organism. The letters are personalised in content and unique aesthetically; because of the varying surface, each has been adapted to engage with the ground it is typed upon. Like everything Cass creates, the letters use vintage paper: old receipts, invoices, or plain stationary, often over a century old, dating back to the time the warming began.

There is a warmth to these letters. The worn ink from the old typewriter, the physical space afforded to each neat block of text, the glowing sepia of the paper draws the viewer towards this swarm. They read one, then turn to its overlapping brother, then read another, and another until the scale of the issue is kindled inside them. Instead of a tsunamic realisation, it is a gradual swelling and churning of an internal tide that will continue to build beyond the bounds of this exhibition.

The 365 paintings which complement the wall of letters, represent 365 days. All organically interact with each other, coming together to tell this bigger story of a year at sea. Like the letters, every piece is unique, each responding to the surface it is painted on. Horizon lines are adjusted to reveal or cover the tin’s typography; colours respond to the pigments noticeable on each surface. The painting process reacts and enhances the objects, working with them to create a new life. We can often see or guess at what the tins were originally used for, and this knowledge or pleasurable speculation of the past enriches the object’s repurposed present.

Kate Reeve–Edwards
Excerpt from exhibition book

365 Days at Sea

“Each painting contains a different body of water, where the horizon line, time of day, and weather conditions vary in every unique view”, writes Kate Reeve-Edwards in the exhibition book. “The painting process reacts and enhances the objects, working with them to create a new life […] A circular ecosystem of reuse and repair is what Cass is gently encouraging. The hand-held world of the tin is regenerated: these small objects which once contained tobacco, mints, or teabags now convey new, bigger ideas.” These artworks look to the past, to the years they’ve spent on this Earth. At the same time, they pay homage to the sea, a great muse to so many. They speak of function, process and time passing; of the tide that daily enters and exits Venice, as it has done for over a millennium. Find below a selection, photographed in various coastal locations.

Timeline

Where Once the Waters was first shown as a comprehensive installation during the 59th Venice Biennale of Art.
A timeline for the ongoing project can be found here.

Letter to Glasgow
October – November 2021: COP26, UK

Where Once the Waters
Spring 2022: Venice Biennale, Italy

Letter to Bill, Letter to Claire, Letter to Conrad, Letter to Grayson, Letter to Stephen
June – August 2022: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, UK

Letter to Rhea
Summer – autumn 2022: I AM WATER New York billboard campaign, USA

Twelve Days
October 2022: Tatha Gallery, UK

Letter to Mesi
November 2022: COP27, Art Speaks Out, Egypt

Six Days
November 2022: Fry Art Society, UK

One Hundred Days
February 2023: The Scottish Gallery, UK

Where Once the Waters
May – June 2023: The Umbrella Arts Center, USA

Fifty Days
May – June 2023: Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, UK

Twelve Days (ii)
September 2023: EcoArtSpace, Santa Fe, USA

Where Once the Waters
May 2024: University of Iceland, Reykjavík

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