Waterbody [2016]

Astronomer Carl Sagan described it as “a pale blue dot.” When seen in photographs taken from space, our planet appears as a blue “globe, flecked with soft wisps of cloud and capped by brilliant white fields of polar ice.” Environmentalist James E. Lovelock in his 1979 book “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth” noted Arthur C. Clarke observation: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean,’ as nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered in water.

Sandwiched between the translucent waxed pages in “Waterbody”, the viewer can see various waterbodies like lakes and billabongs, oceans, puddles, rivers and seas.  Floating text names each waterbody which has been excised from old maps and atlases. As the reader/viewer progresses through the book, the relative size of each waterbody decreases and there is a sense of the delicate nature of this extraordinary natural resource.