Ephemeral Lake 2006

The Australian Garden was awarded Landscape of the Year at the World Architecture Festival – WAK-Awards 2013, Singapore

Ephemeral Lake introduces the narrative of water in this ancient, degraded and arid continent. Water flows across the horizontal surface, spreading out in a dendritic pattern. A land of flood and drought, there are many ephemeral watercourses in Australia. The work is predicated on the idea of the presence and absence of water and the horizontal nature of its dispersal across the arid zones of Australia. Viewed as a meandering rather than a direct flow pattern. This requires a certain way of movement, a linear sensibility. This allows a rhythm and tempo in the work, a quietness, a distillation of time and space.

The ceramic components may be seen either as positive or negative elements, they may indicate where the water is or was. Water exists in the lowest points of the landscape, the depressions or negative spaces. So immediately there is a juxtaposition and ambiguity. The positives are referencing the negative. From an aerial perspective the indentations and depressions become visual markers of the transient nature of water in the arid zones of Australia. The sculpture covers an area of 180 sq metres, it consists of 34 shapes made up of glazed ceramic plates approximately 300mm x 300mm.