Waters I Have Known: FATHOM | Western Fiordland Conservation Series

fathom |ˈfaT͟Həm|

noun

a unit of length equal to six feet (approximately 1.8 m), chiefly used in reference to the depth of water: sonar says that we're in eighteen fathoms .

verb [ with obj. ]

1 [ usu. with negative ] understand (a difficult problem or an enigmatic person) after much thought: he could scarcely fathom the idea that people actually lived in Las Vegas | [ withclause ] : he couldn't fathom why she was being so anxious.2 measure the depth of (water): an attempt to fathom the ocean.ORIGIN Old English fæthm. The original sense was ‘something that embraces,’ (plural)‘the outstretched arms’; hence, a unit of measurement based on the span of the outstretched arms, later standardized to six feet.

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My exhibition FATHOM documents a sea voyage. In October 2007, I was one of ten women and men to participate in the Caselberg Trust's inaugural Breaksea residency - a 'waterborne' adventure in remote Western Fiordland aboard Ruth and Lance Shaw's conservation yacht, the Breaksea Girl. The diverse group included composer Gillian Whitehead, jeweler Lynn Kelly, filmmaker Mark Orton, visual artists Wayne Seyb, Marilyn Webb and Nigel Brown, artist-writers Greg O'Brien and Claire Beynon and poets Alan Roddick and Glenn Colquhoun. FATHOM began as an exploration of an experience, combining responses to the dramatic environment (where it rained with considerable persistence!) with a plea for its preservation. The poems and images in this series reference Fiordland's unique history, its mythology and stories; they distill conversations and relationship dynamics, allude to future collaborative potentials.

That particular boat sailed on - as every good boat must - beyond what was current and personal and out into wider, universal waters, encompassing our shared life journey with its common denominator of detours and challenges, moments of joy, anguish, love, loss, discovery, transformation and learning.

There are some exciting new developments in this work, some of which are so subtle and allusive as to make them night impossible to photograph. An extra layer of imagers and text is etched into each sheet of glass. Glass is, of course, a necessity when working on paper but in these images, I have treated glass as a positive layer, integral to each piece, rather than as a practical framing requirement.

Transparency is an ideal I aspire to, both metaphorically and in 'life lived'; it has been interesting to seek out new methods that allow me to integrate the solidity and weight of drawn and painted images with the ephemeral, quasi-weightless qualities of glass.

You can see some of the process behind this work here and read a selection of Fiordland poems here