Onespace is proud to present Ross Booker’s latest exhibition, Hydrosphere, which marks a significant turning point in the ‘artist’s gaze’ due to recent significant changes with his eyesight. Once reliant upon personal observation of the landscape and close attention to research photography and memory, recent retina detachments and corrective surgery have necessitated a new way of working, and possibly a new way of seeing his subject.
Contemplating the stability of his retinas and their reliability, Booker has boldly adopted a range of digital drawing aids to explore our connectedness to the hydrosphere. As Booker suggests: “I’m fascinated by the mutable nature of water, the interplay of light on its surface, the topographical nature of wave forms, and the many nuanced impressions that are left in its wake on my memory”.
Undaunted by the challenges of adaptation required to see anew, Booker’s work has scaled up in its physical presence, undertaking some of his most ambitious works and installations to date. As catalogue writer Michelle Dawson explains, “It is a given that creativity needs and thrives within constraints. In this instance, that confinement has manifested itself as the Hydrosphere. Booker’s altered perception, like a river tributary flowing around obstacles and forming new paths to the sea, reshapes his process of making and the characteristics of the marks themselves”.
The undulating surface of water becomes the ultimate symbol for the ungraspable nature of existence. It is both phenomenological and eternal – never still, always evolving through constant change. Booker remains preoccupied by notions of change evident in the physical world, and the equilibrium that underpins its stability and its impermanence, giving rise to the transitory nature of our own existence.
Artist Talk: Saturday 16 September, 4:00 – 5:00pm
Opening Event: Saturday 16 September, 5:00 – 7:00pm
Image: Meditation 05, Photo: Louis Lim. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace.
