Flinders University Museum of Art. 22 May 2025
Approximately 70% of Earth's surface is covered in water, about 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of it. We take the ocean for granted, but it is essential to life and is inextricably linked to human society and culture.
In the fascinating exhibition Crosscurrents at Flinders University Museum of Art, several artists exhibit works that explore diverse aspects of the ocean, its significance to human society, and the impact that society has on the undersea world. Curated by Artlink magazine assistant editor Belinda Howden, it includes beautifully crafted artworks by artists with close connections to Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Narungga coastal waters.
Installation view: Crosscurrents, 2025, featuring The Drowned Face (always staring towards the sun) by Mary-Jean Richardson, 2024-2025; GUUYANGGA-BARNDA – FISH TRAP by Sonya Rankine, 2025; Swollen by Honor Freeman, 2025; Sea Speaks and Sea Notes by Chris De Rosa, 2024-2025; photo: Grant Hancock
Local awareness of the ocean has recently been heightened by the appearance of a huge microalgal bloom off the coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula/Ramindjeri Country. Covering an area of four and half thousand square kilometres and up to 20m thick, the bloom evidently resulted from a marine heatwave that emerged in 2024, and it is having a devastating effect on marine life, as well as disrupting human access to the water. It may take some time for the bloom to dissipate, and it’s inevitably associated with global heating. This artistically absorbing exhibition is also a confronting indicator of environmental change and the perilous situation in which we find ourselves.
Chris De Rosa’s Sea Speaks is a representation of an outsized marine sponge. Made from papier-mâché and other materials including algae, it references the invasive algal bloom and, mounted under the ceiling, it looks down on viewers as if the gallery is already under water. De Rosa’s Sea Notes and Sea Maps comprises sets of handmade paper constructed from various materials including pulped paper, seawater, sand, spongia and all kinds of polluting detritus typically found on the beach and in the water. She had posed herself the question, ‘What does it mean to make paper out of seawater?’
Honor Freeman, Full fathom five, 2025, stoneware and porcelain, marine matter, with
Chris De Rosa, Wrack, 2025, papier-mâché, paper, collected organic and inorganic debris, marine matter; photo: Grant Hancock
De Rosa collaborated with Honor Freeman to show Freeman’s Full fathom five — a stoneware and porcelain replica of a concrete Besser block bearing a patina resulting from its lengthy submersion in the sea — which sits atop De Rosa’s Wrack, a papier-mâché representation of a clump of sea grass of the kind washed up on beaches during storms. As well as showcasing the novel and adroit use of these art materials, De Rosa and Freeman highlight the impact of the neglect and misuse of the environment.
Freeman also exhibited Swollen, a stack of hessian, sand-filled sandbags, on which sits a cast porcelain sandbag. Sandbags can be used to keep out floodwaters and as defensive fortifications in warfare, but they are also being used in a coastal rehabilitation program to counter the disappearance of seagrass meadows. The porcelain representation posits the humble yet essential sandbag as a striking sculptural form and iconises it.
Mary-Jean Ricardson’s The Drowned Face (always staring towards the sun) is a large circular wall-painting on which are mounted 48 small, exquisitely coloured panels that capture the varying colours of the waters of Horseshoe Bay, Kantjinwald/Port Elliot. The colour of the water is dependent on the transient effects of light, atmospheric conditions and tidal action, and each panel represents a fleeting experience of the sea.
Detail: Mary-Jean Richardson, Barroco Slump, 2024—2025,
limewash, oil on glassine paper; photo: Grant Hancock
For her enchanting Barroco Slump, Richardson painted a fresco of arabesques over a pale pink wall and displayed on it five painterly depictions of Italian marble statues inspired by the sculpture of Marforio, a Roman god and personification of the titan Oceanus, the father of the river gods of Greek mythology. The depiction of these statues in dribbling, watery-looking paint makes clear that we should not rely on any ocean or river gods to protect our (their) domains.
Ngarrindjeri/Ngadjuri/Narungga/Wirangu artist Sonya Rankine’s GUUYANGGA-BARNDA – FISH TRAP, mounted on the gallery wall and floor, is a small-scale representation of the kind of tidal fish traps that were once found in Garnarra, the northern Narungga region of Yorke Peninsula. Rankine’s evocative artist’s statement recounts the nature and importance of the fish traps and provides a moral and practical lesson in environmental management. Such fish traps were maintained by families over generations until colonisation gradually ended the practice and they were designed to provide food for the community while respecting and maintaining the environment.
Narungga artist Brad Darkson’s video Blue water rule shows imagery of Adelaide’s desalination plant and an aquatic research and development facility. Filmed at night with a hand-held camera, the video suggests that these facilities are being secretly investigated. His accompanying poem muses on industrial society’s colonisation and control of water resources.
Michael Kutschbach, cnidølysis noeëidolon, 2025
wood, glass, plastics, gel wax, acrylic stuffing, paint, pewter, chrome, hair, dust, textiles, grass, found objects, silicone, motor, LED lights, sound, speakers, fog machine; photo: Grant Hancock
Perhaps the most thought-provoking artwork is Michael Kutschbach’s cnidølysis noeëidolon, described as a speculative sculpture, which is an assemblage of many disparate materials arranged to suggest an alien form: part sea monster, part plant-form and part machine. The ‘creature’ emits a haunting booming sound like a slow heartbeat. Its hybrid name is contrived from cnidaria, aquatic invertebrates with barbed stinging cells; lysis, a biological term for the rupture of a cell wall; and noesis, which combines the Greek words for mind and spectral image.
Kutschbach’s fantastical hybrid creature may be seen as an allegory for the collapse of Earth’s ecosystems. Or perhaps such a creature will emerge from that collapse.
Chris Reid
When: 12 May to 5 Sep
Where: Flinders University Museum of Art
More info: flinders.edu.au
Installation view: Crosscurrents,
photo: Grant Hancock
