Davies, Gerald (2017) Flood Story. [Exhibition]
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The Flood Story drawings imagine environments so submerged that they can only be visited by scuba divers. For us, today, inundation events on this scale remain in the future, yet when viewing these drawings, the sense is of looking back into history. Through this temporal shift they suggest we, and the divers, have been transported forward in time to look back at the remains of our folly. The crisis of climate change and rising sea levels is spoken of as having ‘biblical’ proportions and such reference is apt. In Flood Story the divers appear the only sign of human life, yet even they have an otherworldly appearance. Their bodies, which hover and glow, are created by making an absence to represent a presence. In some drawings their role as visitors from another realm is enhanced to include hand gestures of supplication, suggesting they may be angelic saviours. These imaginative images of a radical Anthropocene forewarn us of the global consequences of our actions.