Janet Laurence, CH2 artworks, glass, architecture, contemporary art
Summary
Artist statement
'Water Veil' is a diaphanous, experiential, reflective glass veil that transforms the window between the foyer and the street space at CH2, the City of Melbourne building. It creates a membranous, fluid space in the urban context. It reveals the transformation and purification of water, echoing the black-water treatment within the building and the translucence of purified water. The actual space of the wall expresses a slight ambiguity, a sense of breath through the layering, changing light and reflection.
Using the double-storey height of the window to enhance a vertical sensation and enable a sense of flow and spillage, the wall is made up of layered 'veils' of crystal-clear star-fired glass panels to create whiteness and difference from the surrounding architectural green-tinted float glass. These are screen-printed, subtly imaging laboratory glass vessels.
The lateral panels on either side of the wall are either hanging or standing. Each has been poured with transparent paint in varying tone, reminiscent of fluids in a state of suspension. Each panel represents the chemical elements removed or transformed during water's purification and filtration. The symbols for these elements and their measurements are screen-printed in transparent silver – light or lead coloured. The paint pours vary from granular grey-black to silver and clear, expressing the water's progression from particle state to transparent.
The artwork has an educative and interpretive function within the building, and it creates a dramatic effect from the external public space. It serves to amplify the functionalism of CH2 building as an environmentally sustainable building.
Janet Laurence
