Vanessa Albury
Porthole Waves (Svalbard) from Stream to Sea, 2014-2022
Nine eco-friendly (sustainably, locally forested and milled in Upstate NY paper with vegetable-based ink) photographic wheatpaste panels
33’ x 15.5’
(Rendering above)
Location: 465 Grand Street, New York, NY 10022
Details on how to support coming soon.
Artist’s description:
I went to Svalbard in the Arctic to “be with” what a glacier is in the same year, 2014, that NASA announced glaciers in the Amundsen Sea in Antarctica would unstoppably melt. While I was there I had an intimate view from the porthole in my cabin on the sailboat of the Greenland Sea and fjords along the archipelago 9 degrees South of the North Pole. I woke up staring into the water splashing over my round 13” window and went to bed with the soothing crashes of these waves over the glass and against the hull. It was a uniquely human and intimate experience of these icy waters that captured my attention and inspires me even today. In every moment the water appears completely different due to currents and atmospheric light, even the depth of water running over it, and yet the water is always operating under the same principles. We are at least 70% water, however, most people do not even begin to fathom the intricate relationship we have to the waters that surround us daily. We don’t hold in our minds the obvious connections of our bodies, our cities, the rivers, streams and oceans that are in constant flow together. We have trained ourselves to specifically not pay attention to this water system impacting our every breath within us each and beyond our bodies. With Coral Projects I bring awareness to our human body relationship to the waterways around us in and through our cities, flowing to the Sea. I take these very human perspectives of water, of the sea, and with Porthole Waves (Svalbard) from Stream to Sea, I repeat the pattern of a stream upstate near Harvey Mountain where I spent a few weeks this year. While I was there I thought about the streams I hiked up running the water and silt off my boots downstream to the Hudson and the Bay of New York, to the Atlantic and back up to Svalbard with the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift where I shot this week. It’s a simple mental exercise to follow this flow from where I stand to where I stood and it begins to connect me back to what I have been trained to deny, the nature of water within each of us. We must reconnect to water, to nature and to each other to sustain our existence and rejoin the natural patterns of planet Earth.
vanessaalbury.com
Inquiries: vanessa@vanessalbury.com and eileen@neumeraki.com
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