Figures of Speech
Emma Critchley’s work often explores the intrinsically primordial nature of water as both the material from which life on earth emerged and the primary component of the human body. It evokes a sense of a greater time before and after our existence, something that is inconceivably bigger than us, and reminds us of the temporality of being human.
The portraits capture people speaking underwater – their words creating large bubbles, shimmering like mercury, obscuring faces. Through working underwater, a space where the intricacy of speech is broken down into one of tones, rhythms and vibrations, the work investigates ways in which communication, or its attempt, becomes
the physical interplay between body and environment.
Image: Stefan Handy for Meadow Arts
About the artist
Emma Critchley
Emma Critchley is an artist who uses a combination of photography, film, sound and installation to continually explore the human relationship with the underwater environment as a political, philosophical and environmental space. She is Royal College of Art alumni and has developed works funded by organisations including The National Media Museum, Arts Council England, British Council, Singapore International Foundation, British Academy and the European Regional Development Fund. Her work has been shown extensively nationally and internationally in galleries and institutions including The Australian Centre of Photography, the ICA Singapore, The National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Tate St Ives.
In 2019 she completed a short film funded by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation called ‘Common Heritage’, about the imminent threat of deep-sea mining for rare earth minerals. For this she worked with experts in deep sea ecology and law at the National Oceanography Centre and Universities of Plymouth & Southampton.
In collaboration with artist Lee Berwick, Emma has developed a large-scale public soundscape about underwater acoustic pollution, working with a number of organisations including the British Antarctic Survey, the Californian Ocean Alliance and the National Maritime Museum. This had its initial installation in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel at the beginning of 2020 and they’re now looking to tour.
In 2019, Emma was the winner of the EARTH WATER SKY residency programme with Science Gallery Venice, where she has been working with the Ice Memory Project. The resulting film installation launched in the official Italian pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 and went on to be exhibited in partnership with Science Gallery Venice in September.