Water: A Necessary Ecology: Group Show, NYC

'It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself.' - Carl Jung

As mist or ice, a wave or brook, a bowl full of goldfish, a pool or a droplet, rivers, vases, splashes, bubbles: there is nothing else in the natural world as varied as water. It can be clear and shallow, or deep and impenetrable. It can restore and destroy. It can transform and be transformative, yet simultaneously reflect a natural continuity. In its various states, water has long preoccupied the painters and sculptors of the Western and non-Western artistic canons, revealing itself to be as spiritual as physical, a vessel through which emotional and intellectual ideas are expressed.

The Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery has continued this tradition with an April group exhibition across its two London locations, showcasing artists inspired by water. The Mott Street gallery will extend this theme with its May show, displaying seascapes by British painter Barbara Macfarlane, raindrop oil paintings by Esther Nienhuis and oil and resin water vessels and ships by New Zealander Rob Tucker, who will also be represented by sculptural pieces. Laurence Jones' hyperreal pool scenes will be joined by monochromatic pastel drawings of water sources by draughtsman Sheila Clarkson, as well as recent work by Queensland photographer Toby Burrows. A selection of Aboriginal water dreamings and works on paper by Bangladeshi outsider artist Shafique Uddin will also be on show. 

With the exhibition celebrating water's diverse manifestations through a variety of media, the theme of water ultimately serves to reveal the multiple workings of a human response, its possibility and flexibility.