This contemporary art exhibition interrogates water as a life-giving element, whose importance to humanity has been examined from multiple angles for thousands of years. Artists make work about it, scientists experiment with it, and poets write about it.

The Water Understands takes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Water as a starting point. In the poem, Emerson imbues the element of water with subjective human experiences – understanding, heartbreak, wit, the ability to destroy, and alternatively the ability to enjoy pleasure. It is this understanding, or the water’s metaphorical ability to imbue us with knowledge, which is at the core of this exhibition – knowledge of the past, cultural knowledge, traditional knowledge, poetic knowledge, political knowledge, and aesthetic knowledge – knowledge systems which inform the artists and artworks in this exhibition.

The artists selected for The Water Understands work within a broad range of cultural narratives, and use different media, allowing for an exhibition that interrogates the metaphorical qualities of water from multiple perspectives.

Participating artists:  

• Leah Bullen
• Michael Cook
• Tamara Dean
• Keg de Souza
• Shaun Gladwell
• Phillip George
• Gregory Hodge
• Miguel Angelo Libarnes
• Anna Madeleine Raupach
• Douglas Schofield
• Angela Tiatia

View the exhibition catalogue

This exhibition is supported by Sydney Festival 2025, and is part of MAG&M's CEAD Collective for Environmental Art & Design initiative. 

Curated by Ben Rak.

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