[ISEA2018] Artists Statement: Grace Grothaus & Rena Detrixhe — Wake

Artists Statement

Art, Science & Us sub-programme

Wake is a video piece documenting the installation of the same name created for a gallery space. Constructed from shipping containers, Wake investigates water and its use in our infrastructures, particularly oil extraction. In this multi-sensory immersive installation water is animated by wave disturbances created via sound played through submerged speakers. Recordings of industrial water usage gathered by the artists across Oklahoma are composed into an audio track which rises and falls based on a ten-year graph of the state’s seismic activity, aggravated in recent years by the rapid increase in hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The water’s movement is reflected onto the interior walls, rendering the soundscape in shadow and light.

  • Grace Grothaus (USA) integrates interactive electronics into installation, sculptures, and paintings that aim to create spaces for reflection about human agency and balance within our built and natural environment. Grothaus earned her BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute and is pursuing an MFA from the University of California San Diego. Her work represented the United States in the 2012 World Creativity Biennale and has been exhibited nationwide. She is a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Merit Award winner and received an Art365 Fellowship. Her art has featured on the cover of Art Focus magazine and This Land Press.   gracegrothaus.com
  • Rena Detrixhe (USA) creates contemplative work combining repetitive process and collected or scavenged materials to produce meticulous large-scale objects and installations that pursue a poetic understanding of time, material, history, and place, along with a constant reckoning of human impact. Recent work explores systems of value in relation to land and water and slowness as a means of cultivating empathy and understanding. Detrixhe received her BFA from the University of Kansas in 2013, has exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States, and is currently in her third year of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.    renadetrixhe.com