Design and Art Australia Online

Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford are known primarily as a collaborative duo who, for the past ten years, have produced many public artworks of considerable scale and beauty. These have been the result of prestigious commissions from governments, public authorities, councils and corporations. They include Storm Waters , 2003, a multi-award winning environmental stormwater sculpture for Landcom’s Victoria Park site, South Sydney; Tied to Tide , 1999, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Pyrmont Point Park, (ARUP NAWIC Award); Tank , 1997, Downing Centre Tunnel, Museum Station, Sydney (NAWIC Merit Award); and Well , 1995, New Children’s Hospital, Westmead, Sydney.

Using water, wind and light as sculptural media, the natural elements in these large-scale kinetic artworks are not the subject of the artworks but rather a vehicle for the emotions. The works may be playful and unpredictable, inviting an imaginative response from the viewer. In each case, a natural phenomenon behaves strangely. In Storm Waters , for instance, water falls down a slope in a tease of nature at a 45 degree angle. In Tied to Tide , the long timber arms hinged to a jetty in Sydney Harbour respond with inverse movement to the rise and fall of the tide.

Likewise, in Turpin’s 'Water Works’ series from 1991, falling water becomes a play of gravity and surface tension where water is reduced to a descent of myriad droplets. The effect is an intriguing slowing of time where water appears to float upwards instead of downwards.

Turpin’s individual exhibition piece, Holy Ghost , 2004, makes poetic use of water, everyday materials and simple computer controls to create a gentle fog that follows a changing pattern of simulated breathing.

Writers:

Murray-Cree, Laura

Date written:

2006

Last updated:

2011