THE ULTIMATE KINDNESS IS WATER (2024)

How permanent are the transport, housing, planning and agricultural paradigms that underpin Western society? “It easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism” said Fredric Jameson. In 1968 protesters pulled up cobbles on the streets of Paris and found the city lay on sand. The Situationists coined the phrase “under the pavement, the beach”, hinting at hidden transience in apparently immutable structures.

In this set of new artworks, aerial imagery of the United States is combined with experimental photography processes to explore the sense of potentiality and change that lies beneath the asphalt and infrastructure of our modern political economies. 

A visitor to my studio who saw these works at an early stage said it reminded her of the concept of Shàng shàn ruò shuǐ (上善若水) from daoism. Her exquisite, and unusual translation, of this phrase: the ultimate kindness is water.

I am indebted to Faye Lu and Matthew McCallum for their perspectives on this work.