WATER RITES

Water as culture, concept and commodity

WATER RITES is an upcoming exhibition at ACE OPEN Adelaide, featuring installations, screen and sound works, public programs, new discursive writing, workshops and experimental fermentation techniques to explore the agency of water.

A fundamental element of human and other forms of existence, water stars across ancient origin stories and contemporary geopolitics. As sweat, tears and the ocean, saltwater indexes pleasure and pain, effort, escape and exaltation. And as the planetary crisis continues to escalate, fresh water is at the centre of a rising speculative marketplace in (over-)allocations and futures. Water is life, and it holds memory; it is culture; and it is also, now, the world’s most valuable commodity. Water, in many ways, materialises the conditions of contemporaneity. There is a lot of weight on water. What is it like to be water, performing work on and through us?

This project critically examines our relationship to water from the situation of the driest state on the driest continent on earth, in a nation deeply under the spell of extractive industries. WATER RITES positions water as a non-human agent through an array of vessels and acts giving voice to water, its rhythms, needs and desires. 

Artists:
Brad Darkson
Mandy Quadrio
Libby Harward

+ others forthcoming