Water:Image Conference

House. Jerusalem by Per Bak Jensen for sale at Galleri Bo Bjerggaard

4th - 6th July 2012

A conference to celebrate the 10th year of summer symposia organised by Land/Water and the Visual Arts Plymouth University, UK Heidi Morstang, Jem Southam, Liz Wells.

Keynote speakers: Deborah Bright and Per Bak Jensen

Core Themes Place / Poetics / Politics / Materiality / What is water?

From salt water to holy water, there is a long history of art referencing water in its many dimensions, locations and states. Imagery may explore water as substance, make metaphoric allusion, or engage debates relating to the geographies and socio-politics of water. Artists may have deep personal relationships with particular waters, or more documentary concerns with water needs and uses.

Water means life. In an era of climate change, debates about water, its availability and significance range across a number of academic fields. This conference will focus on water in its many states and circumstances, wherever it flows, floods, freezes, stagnates or evaporates. It will bring together artists/academics in lens-based and related fields of enquiry internationally, offering inter-disciplinary opportunities to share research, whether practice-led, art historical, geographic, theoretical or curatorial.

Themes and questions include: -

. Practitioners responding to and representing material aspects of water as a substance capable of many states, from the frozen to steam and vapour?

. Water as related to ecology, process, boundaries, the liminal and the transitional, physical geography and environmental change?

. Cultural geographies and the politics of water and place?

. Psychological and phenomenological perceptions and expressivity.

. Narratives, histories, memories and journeys.

Land/Water consists of artists, writers and curators who embrace a diversity of creative and critical practices. As a research group it operates as a forum for interrogation of nature and culture, aesthetics and representation. Questioning imagery and practices relating to land, landscape and place is central to our ethos. As artists, writers, curators we work individually exploring space and place as a point of departure for experimenting in new modes of communication through picturing. We generate work that addresses a range of issues. These include environmental change, sustainability, journey, site and regional specificity.

Price includes the conference proceedings, conference pack, tea breaks, lunches and a wine reception on the 4th July.

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