PARKER Contemporary presents Tidal, a new exhibition by Melbourne-based artist Bridget Hillebrand, bringing together works shaped by close and repeated encounters with water.
Rather than treating water as a landscape to be represented, Hillebrand approaches it as a condition — rhythmic, unstable and beyond human control. The tide becomes a visible expression of forces operating elsewhere, influencing how we look, make and experience place.
The works developed through recent residencies at a floating studio on Lake Tyers in East Gippsland and along the Shoalhaven River at Bundanon. These sustained encounters with tidal environments inform works that respond to shifting visibility, unstable ground and the traces left by contact, pressure and return.
Working across printmaking, ink and folded paper, Hillebrand uses repetition to register change. Marking, layering and folding echo the cyclical movements of currents, sediment and tidal flow, allowing the surfaces to hold evidence of movement over time.
Tidal considers the unseen forces that shape what comes to the surface, positioning artistic practice as a form of attunement to pull, pressure, return and change.
