Solo Show Devonport Regional Gallery

Rising Shimmer
Devonport Regional Gallery Solo Show 2022

Standing at Bass Strait’s tidal edge and gazing out to sea, I ignore the liquid crystal of her shimmering surface for a moment, and reflect upon the unknown depths beneath. It is as if the ripples shift and shimmer to distract us, to keep us mesmerised by surface things - the present, the simple, shallow and known. However, it is that which lurks below which draws me to her in this moment. Her heaving tidal pull which threatens to sweep away my sensibilities and constructs. The darkness and mystery and danger of her oceanic self. Her powerful heaving undertows which cannot be detected as motion and yet can crush the breath from lungs. Her invisible weighted rips conspiring against us, like destiny seems to, and resistance only gives rise to panic. To dread. To flail is to fail. All you can do is give over to her, surrender and trust this unseen thing drawing you away from the passivity of the shallows, away from safety, pulling you towards depths yet un-encountered. Lured towards what lies beneath her shimmering crystalline surface, which laps the sands on which your self-assurance is built, yet continues out into the deep like a liquid glistening skin beyond even the horizon.
 
We are all mostly water. And the moon also pulls our tides within, drawing us into our own depths, even as we resist. Here I am usually swimming within my self-imposed flags. Dipping my toes in and retreating to paddle in the shallows of my life. What is she saying to me, with this shimmering surface, this ripple effect? ‘Risk all, dive in and break the shimmering beauty of our surface life, and allow these tidal currents to take us deeper into ourselves, our mysteries, our undiscovered oceans.’ We can - if we allow the sensuous sea-breeze to caress our sun-kissed, sea-salt skin - choose to venture beyond the safekeeping of our harbours. We can experience the tides of unknown destiny, and open up the feared, the passionate, the vulnerable, the erotic, and all the potential that the deeper dive promises us, from the ocean of our inner selves.
 
In these watercolour pictures, I also examine external things - like the brightness of our iconic Tasmanian light upon the ocean. As the sun kisses the dusk horizon and catches the crest of gusty waves, it creates shadows on the shimmering surface, and I am lured by the shimmer rising. It is as if the sun’s rays and the wind’s zephyrs conspire to create a kind of Morse Code of gusts: An oceanic love letter is it? A warning perhaps? A plea, a rippling seaborne SOS?

Without knowing why, rising from this shimmer, my imagination runs wild. Standing here by the edge, and staring across the sequinned fabric of her surface, I suddenly see a future horror. A dread. It is no longer an inner journey. No longer a sensual encounter between skin and sea. Instead, something dystopian rises from the horizon - an emerging future for Bass Strait of salmon farms, of corruption, of compromise. A future of refuse, oil slicks, cruelty, algae, and our sea shimmers no more. Today it is not the romantic beauty of her pushing my brush, it is these darker destinies she sends in her silent code, of wind on water.
 
“I look out to the sea rising and falling. I think how peaceful it will be to dive under those waves. I breathe fast as I walk towards the water. I tell myself softly. I have not come here to go swimming. I have come to the sea to be held.”
Tamsin Calidas, I am an Island, 2020.