WaterLine was site responsive work commissioned by the Fremantle Biennale in 2017. WaterLine refers to the 30 metre tide line made by the Tsunami wave height which hit Aceh Province, Indonesia in 2004. The Whadjuk Noongar/ Fremantle shore borders the same Indian ocean, an earthquake prone region that caused this and other Tsunamis. Documented and anecdotal accounts of strange ocean activity all along the Western Australian coast are presented in a multi-disciplined installation including video, photography and painting . The work was derived from fieldwork to Phuket, Thailand and researched archival accounts of unusual tidal surges and oceanic currents along the west coast of Australia. These records are reactivated in the video An Account of a Tsunami, which situates the event not as an isolated anomaly but as part of a broader climatic and oceanic system.

The work underscores the extent to which the tsunami reverberated across human and more-than-human worlds, foregrounding climate extremes as relational, consequential forces that exceed the boundaries of the individual and the local.

Installation 1 Newspaper House, Fremantle.

‘Like a wall, very black’ a ‘disappearing sea’, a ‘vertical rise’. Text from eyewitness accounts

Accompanying this work is the site-responsive Cliff street piece ‘Water Line’ (37 Cliff st, Fremantle) that aims to realise this connection through a bodily or physical comparison to the height and force of the Tsunami that reached 30ft when it hit Aceh Province

Installation 2 PS Contemporary Artspace

Waterline 2017 was an installation in two sites. Like a wall. Very Black 2017 was an intervention outside the Newspaper House , Fremantle of a blue photo-luminescent vertical line 30 feet High . This was the height of the Tsunami wave which hit Banda Aceh in 2004. The text, 'Like a wall. Very Black' was quoted from an eye witness account.

The second part was in a gallery space where the waterline was painted along the walls of the gallery in blue with three words drawn above the line based on research of the statistics of those 'displaced' 'injured' ' deceased' . It included an expansive installation of textiles, fans , video and text. In 2024 there are still 400 people unaccounted for.

Hightide17 Fremantle Biennale ARTISTS included

TINA HAVELOCK STEVENS / CAT HOPE / FELICE VARINI /JO DARBYSHIRE / JOHANNES S. SISTERMANNS / TREVOR RICHARDS / HARRIS ARCHITECTS / JACOBUS CAPONE / DEVON WARD & JANET CARTER / ERIN COATES & ANNA NAZZARI / DOMENICO DE CLARIO / ROSS POTTER / LAURA CIONCI / 22 PILLARS / TOM MÙLLER / JESSEE LEE JOHNS / ZORA KREUZER / PENNY COSS / NED BECKLEY / SIMRYN GILL / ARIANE PALASSIS / AMY PEREJUAN-CAPONE / LEON EWING / PAUL ISKOV / TIM BURNS / LAUREL NANNUP / GEORGE HOWLETT / ZWEITGEIST / IDOLONLAB / GENREFONIX / HOLLY STORY

https://www.instagram.com/fremantlebiennale/?hl=en

Waterline Installation View, PSAS , Fremantle. Image Duncan Wright.

Click link for Catalogue
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pb9zbuyc6u8z54r/High%20Tide%2017%20Viewer%20copy.pdf?raw=1