Standing Wave: Pt Nepean
Kinetic site-responsive light sculpture
Fluorescent tubes, intervened circuitry, aluminium structure
5.2m x 4.2m x .4m
Q-Studio, Quarantine Station, Point Nepean National Park/Monmar
Curated by Cameron Bishop and Danny Lacy,
supported by David Cross and Simon Reis
FRONTBEACHBACKBEACH Festival 2022
In physics, a standing wave is a phenomenon occurs when two waves of the same frequency and wavelength move in opposite directions, as the waves meet, they become superimposed, giving the illusion of the wave standing still, creating a harmonic resonance. Standing Wave: Pt Nepean arrests the senses and overwhelms the body in a hypnotising pulsing field, an optical illusion of spatial uncertainty, a wave within a wave, a bioelectric composition, an exposed grid of fluorescent tubes form a breaking wave, collapsing under the pressure of extreme weather.
Standing Wave: Pt Nepean underlines the fragility of contemporary cities amongst the earth-scale shift of increasingly volatile weather conditions. Suspended in a state of ignition, the oscillating structure becomes a living body, the more time you spend with the pulsing light it starts to transform, your perception adjusts and the artwork re-emerges as a new elaborate ecological rhythm expanding in your periphery.
“James Geurts finds the confluence of things, between the primordial, the technological and the astronomical. What Geurts’ kinetic sculpture calls on here is a reverence for how the shape of the sea floor, and forces of the moon and tides bring the phenomenon of the standing wave into being. A wave that appears to hold its form, without moving, and yet the forces that go into its eminence are planetary, much like our own bearing on the world.”
Dr Cameron Bishop, curatorial essay FBBB
“The qualities of human life and physical landscape are stirred in Geurts’ project Standing Wave. One wavelength becomes two as it reflects itself in the architecture, seeming amplified in the process, and generating a resonance that is palpable. Moving around the space, the waves of light and sound resonate each through the other. Their volume and intensity shifts depending on the body’s alignment. This draws the visitor into the conversation, activating their physicality and the internal frequencies and rhythms that course through it, now perceptibly. There is a sense in which the archetypal use of light (the wave) stirs the latent presence of this invisible history. The tension between movement and fixity, and the conversation between visibility and invisibility, echoes the dynamic produced by the sound and light works. This is the incredibly rich and vital world of physical and metaphysical relations in which we swim, when we pay attention. The artist deals with the essential correlation between forces affecting matter and those affecting our imagination as equals, as indissociable, as wonderfully and curiously porous and entwined.”
Dr Julie Louise Bacon, UK, curatorial essay Standing Wave: Hoorn, Netherlands