Ground Water Mirror

A narrow, out-of-focus waterfall. The water is very bright white with cyan, cool tones, and the background is very dark, black. It falls as though it were a narrow shaft of light, gently.

Waterfall on the Upper Reaches, 2018

info

×

Portrait of a naked woman from the waist up. Her face obscured by both shadow and a chainmail veil that falls heavy over her head and shoulders till just below the nipples. Her gaze is directed to the left of camera, outwards

Veil of the Soul, 2018

info

×

The bow of a red plastic dinghy in full sun, set against bright blue / emerald green water. The triangular bow of the boat resembles a mountain peak

Ground Water Mirror, 2017

info

×

Burnout, 2017

info

×

The view of a dark mountain peak in subdued light, framed by a window. The view outside appears blueish and cold, in contrast with the warm yellow interior lit by a lightbulb

Looking out, looking in, 2017

info

×

A hand reaches out and gently penetrates the surface of dark blue, opaque water.

Left bank, middle reach, high expectations, 2017

info

×

A hand presents a tiny, antique chainmail handbag half-filled with black sand. Sand falls through the chainmail forming a small mound. The subject is silhouetted, lit from behind through a transparent, gridded glass

Sandclock, 2018

info

×

Upper body and lower face of a naked man, he wears a chainsaw chain around his neck

Chainman, 2018

info

×

Looking into a dark pine forest from the periphery

Forest, 2018

info

×

A power pole with a street sign reading "Wordsworth Street" surrounded by residential trees and shrubs, and to one side, a commercial-looking wire fence topped with barbed wire

The End of Wordsworth Street, 2018

info

×

The face of a woman, her gaze directed towards the light, outwards. She wears a flax woven headdress that obscures her vision. Tukutuku panels are barely visible in the dark background, showing the poutama stepped pattern

Travel without moving, 2018

info

×

A view of overlapping planes or mountains are framed by a round window. The mountains are obscured by heavy rain or fog

Hatrick's window (Tongariro), 2018

info

×

Dirty looking water falls over a built structure

Waterfall on the Grid (Māngere), 2017

info

×

A pair of hands present a bundle of tangled neck chains in front of a dark background. There are 5 pendants included: a small cross and 4 miniature replicas of distance markers from the original surveyor's chain

Power lines, 2018

info

×

A naked woman's neck and décolletage with a nasty red skin irritation in place of a necklace

Chain reaction, 2018

info

×

Overlapping steam clouds coloured by the setting sun

Lonely as a Cloud, 2018

info

×

Looking up at the side of a large commercial-looking building made of corrugated iron. The signage displays a phone number underneath a stylised interpretation of Mount Taranaki

View of the peak, 2018

info

×

A man inside a car looks outwards, his face partly obscured by a fogged car window

As far as the eye can reach, 2018

info

×

A dark, out-of-focus view of a waterbody and very dark mountainous cliffs and a heavy sky

Where the river begins to look like itself, 2018

info

×

A wounded woman's thigh with blood running down it. Her body is out of shot, but the leg is revealed from beneath a coloured towel. A body of water is in the background.

I didn't feel it till I saw it, 2017

info

×

Ground Water Mirror installation view @ Two Rooms, Auckland 2018. Photos © Sam Hartnett

info

×

info

×

info

×

Catalogue - The End of Wordsworth Street, 2018

info

×

Catalogue - The End of Wordsworth Street, 2018

info

×

Ground Water Mirror is about a relationship with land and particularly water that has changed since industrialisation. Reflecting on the western notion of human domination over water, and the feeling of alienation from it that followed a dependance on its subjugation, I explore our reasons for romanticising this concept we have of Nature.

The title is a slight mistranslation of Grundwasserspiegel – the german word for water table. Aside from water's obvious mirror-like qualities that resulted in my translation, there is an expectation that follows contemplation of water – for it to provide a solution to the questions or anxieties we project onto it.

However we choose to describe water, we inevitably return to ourselves and our own experiences with water, using descriptions for which water itself has no name. It's cold, it runs, it flows; it seeps, rises and falls.

Berlin's ground water mirror is never far beneath one's feet, I can hear it flow through those pink or blue overhead pipes as it is pumped across the city from construction sites to waterways. They remind us why we long for that other kind of water, for Nature. Why we rely on this fantasy, fetishise it – and if we are privileged enough – travel to find it.

As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires – William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, 1995

Conor Clarke, 2018

Two Rooms press release

SoFA Catalogue 2019

CONOR CLARKE.

Ground Water Mirror