Bianca Kennedy & The Swan Collective

In this exhibition Hydra Islands Bianca Kennedy and The Swan Collective open up new perspectives on the interplay of water, people, flora and fauna.
Islands are the common theme behind Bianca Kennedy’s drawings, films, sculptural models and photographs. Island life allows the artist to create mystical picture puzzles for the ‘Birth of Tragedy’. Bianca Kennedy appropriates the bathtub as the setting for tragedy in her film ‘Sonar Songs’ and also in 200 drawings. Under Kennedy the humble bath is transformed into an inverted island, an island consisting of water surrounded by dry land. A place of peace. An oasis where one’s spirits are allowed to descend to explore human intimacy in all its forms – sensual passion, the womb sheltering the incipient human being, vulnerability, nakedness, love, death. Bianca Kennedy interprets the ‘decadent revolution’ of bathing through photographs of sculptural models of bathing pools and their further development.
The architecture of the water tank recurs in all of the work of The Swan Collective artist group. The five members inspire one another with their individual techniques, and break apart rigid forms of painting through animation and special effects. In this way a virtual reality is created. The collective extend the ephemeral nature of acrylic paintings featuring hydroelectric power stations and reservoirs by drawing on the versatility of its collective powers and projecting a dynamic interplay of light and shadow onto the painted waterscapes. A pair of 3D glasses enables the visitor to dive into a virtual world and experience intimately the invigorating and yet threatening power of water. The exhibited paper embossments display forms of life which have each in their own way developed an organic method for storing water – cactuses, krakens, primitive animals.
These artists have produced works which are based on science and which comprise drawings, videos, paintings, 3D animations, paper embossments, sculptural models and photographs. In the exhibition Hydra Islands, Bianca Kenney and The Swan Collective pay homage to islands and waterscapes as habitats and repositories of precious resources.