‘The Seas That Bind Us’, Carol Herbertson and Calum Hurley
7 – 30 January 2022
“The sea is not a metaphor,” says Hester Blum.(i) The oceans, which make up over 70% of the earth, are so imbricated with human society and culture that they are often rendered invisible; their fluidity and materiality is turned to metaphorical uses and never recognized literally. The oceans within us are washed away in the ebb and flow of metaphor. But the sea is not a metaphor, and we need to be attentive to the material conditions of its fluidity; to think from and with the ocean.(ii) In The Seas That Bind Us, Carol Herbertson and Calum Hurley explore the seas that bind us together, insisting on an artistic practice and philosophy that is attentive to the fluidity of the oceans and the potential that the currents offer as places of home and of migration in times of crisis. Central to The Seas That Bind Us is an exploration of oceanic identity – communal, national, individual, and familial – in a land that is girt by sea. Are the oceans the currents that bind us together, or the depths that keep us apart?”
(i) Blum, Hester. “The Prospect of Oceanic Studies.” PMLA 125:3 (2010), p. 670.
(ii) Peters, Kimberley, and Phillip Steinberg. “A Wet World: Rethinking Place, Territory, and Time.” Society and Space (2015), n.p.