RHYTHM. PRESENT YET PERIPHERAL

2023

 

 

As the residency at the Boathouse slowly began to reveal its daily rhythms, the artist became inspired by tidal processes and landscapes, a series of sculptures and video works created by Buttner, engaged people on personal, local and global scales in conversation around sea level rise and our contemporary relationship to water, as individuals, and as a community. 

 

A response to tidal ebbs and flows, early morning swimmers and beach walkers, embodied sculptural and painterly responses quickly began to take hold within the studio space, the camera lens captured a rich and diverse topography, a witness to the effects on wildlife, plant life, disappearing coastlines and its impact on the local economy.  

 

Over the 3 month period the artist extended an open invitation to passers-by to come into the studio space and engage in the art through open conversation.  For the artist, it was an opportunity to listen, as people shared their personal experiences of the harbour and beach, how it evolved and changed over the years, though these conversations connecting everyday experiences and contemporary art, all of which helped inform and influence the making of the sculptures, paintings and video works. 

 

As poetic gesture, with each tidal movement of the sea, the artist recorded the buoys, tidal ebbs and flows, peripheral repetition, moments in time, present, an active agent, the sea, land and people, co-collaborators. This new work will be completed off site, it will form part of an installation in which the artist grapples with climate change in tactile, poetic pattern. 

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