DROP
LAURA WOODWARD (Australia)
Why is water so essential to sustain life?
Water is one of the few substances we all know the chemical structure for – H2O. And it is this structure that makes water a rule-bender when it comes to physical properties. Ice floats because water expands when frozen, and hot water freezes faster than cold water. Water is also incredibly sticky and difficult to compress. In this cyclic system, water is essentially the ‘life-blood’ of the kinetic sculpture, just as it is for much more complex systems such as our own bodies, or the layered ecosystems through which all life has emerged. Drop requires water’s unique balance of qualities so that it may continue working: it needs water’s ability to be moved incrementally, its fluidity, its lack of compressibility, and its weight. The amount of water in one vessel is irrelevant to the system; what is important is that there is the ‘perfect’ amount of water balanced across the three vessels, so that the system is in perfect balance at any given point in time – and can therefore continue to function.
Melbourne-based artist Laura Woodward has been exhibiting sculptural, kinetic installations for ten years. Her current artistic trajectory involves the creation of looped systems embodied in these sculptural installations. She received an Australia Council Emerging and Mid-Career Artist New Work Grants, won the Agendo Prize for Emerging Artists in 2009, and exhibited as a finalist in the International Aesthetica Art Prize in York, UK, in 2018.