Susan Derges: Liquid Form: 1985-99

Essay by Martin Kemp. Susan Derges' work is an inquiry into the rhythms and cycles of nature, and the relationships between inner and outer, mental and physical, subjective and objective experience. Exploring both the elemental and metaphorical properties of water, mercury, shadow, ice, tree branches, and tadpoles, her photograms visualize the unseen orders of science, the music of matter, and the interplays of process and organic form. Using sound wave vibrations to align powder into different geometric shapes, her Chladni Figures (1985) evoke the speeding paths of atomic particles. In Hermetica (1989) she places mercury at the vertex of a speaker cone, producing photograms resonant of shell patterns. Perhaps the most dramatic series presented is The Observer and the Observed (1991), in which sine waves shape a small jet of water into an arc, and then, illuminated by a strobe light, each drop of water becomes a small mirror reflecting a human face. In addition to these and other works produced between 1985 and 1999, this remarkably beautiful and original book also includes an essay by Martin Kemp, technical notes describing how each series was made, and a selected bio and bibliography of the artist. "Susan Derges has built on the classic traditions of art and photography while having quite literally invented a whole new means of taking pictures." James Danziger