Frontiers
In Frontiers water is everywhere and the only solidity comes from unknown forms. The viewer roams through a seemingly apocalyptic landscape, encountering what may appear to be detritus from the aftermath of a disaster or perhaps boats carrying those fleeing crisis. Alternatively, we may be witnessing the discovery of new land, artificial islands for a future scenario where land has formed from debris.
Frontiers was made in 2015 when China was pursuing a programme of land reclamation on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The work forms part of the artists’ ongoing interest in the tensions and contradictions in the vast landscape of ocean governance and the continual disputes that probe the edges of the law and territorial demarcation. Throughout history the ocean has been considered a location for mineral resources, territorial space, a facilitator of movement of goods and people, and yet culturally it remains a place of fantasy.
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.