Valerie Durant

Influx: Waiting on the Water 

Durant began gathering botanical as a silent pursuit on the cusp of spring in 2020.

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The botanicals are  layered in water as sculptural assemblages and each is  frozen as a cohesive mass.  As the ice melts,  the works are reintroduced to an outdoor body of water and photographed.  The state of flux between stasis and dissipation is captured in these time-based photographic  works.  

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The painterly images  incorporate  analog and digital processes  including scans, reversals and cyanotypes. This approach honours contemporary photographic practises, while referencing  Dutch still-life paintings,  memento mori, a reminder of the fleeting nature of life. 

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The work explores the persistence of time, continuum, lifecycles in nature,  the infinite ebb and flow of matter and the personification of  water as  source.

 

Durant reflects on  mortality,  aging and  the human condition, touching on themes of loss and human fragility. 

 

The work serves as  a mindful inquiry into our warming environment, interpreting climate change as a call for urgent self-reflection and global transformation while  questioning  contemporary notions of the fundamental materiality of both living and manufactured objects.

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