Meerithic

Meerithic is a body of creative works that explores oceanic systems as models of distributed intelligence, material exchange, and non-linear formation.

Rather than representing marine environments, the sculptural works in Meerithic are inspired by felt sense memories. Recollections of what is it like to crave being in the sea especially after living on the South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand where to enter the water led to ice headaches and a pinching of skin. With the cold mist from Antarctica crossing the landscape on a near daily basis there were many days where I wished to wrap myself in the warm currents of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and drift to a warmer shore. The longing to float on a warm sea, to be part of a surface which is so still it mirrors the sky can lead to a feeling of semi submerged immersion in an acutely sentient space. A space which appears anti structural; as there are no clean edges between air and water, ocean and air. Space and time become blended and the elements beyond categorisation. The body melts porously into a diffusion of breath and lapping water. Life is no longer human-centered but rather ecologically whole. The body is not on or of the salt water but softly held within it. There is no drag anchor, there is no undercurrent damage there is simply a hydro-embodied intelligence that begins to emerge.

This hydro-embodied intelligence operates through processes of memory recall, oceanic myths and stories, the aggrandization of ancestral biographies from Venetian merchants to the seafaring collective stories of Australia. Making is non-linear, inspired by processes that parallel the marine environment: accretion, sedimentation, coiling, and aggregation. Consider the correlation between crochet and coral. Similarly, clay is treated as an active, responsive medium. A material capable of registering pressure, repetition, and time. Both fibre and ceramic forms appear grown rather than constructed.

Recurring motifs in this body of work include serpentine structures, anemone-like bodies, and vessel forms. These are not symbolic in a fixed sense, but function as dynamic elements within a broader system. Serpentine forms suggest circulation and continuity; vessels act as sites of exchange rather than containment; anemone-like structures operate as interfaces between internal and external conditions.

The work draws conceptually from oceanic mythologies: Stories, records and illustrations of Oceanids, Ondines, and marine serpents, not as narrative references, but as frameworks for understanding relational and non-human modes of being. These mythic presences are embedded within the material logic of the work, contributing to an expanded sense of agency and presence.

A key aspect of the series is the use of fragmentation and accumulation. Works such as Pelagic Detritus and In the Atoll Life Reaches Upwards position residue and aggregation as generative forces, challenging distinctions between waste and growth. Form emerges through clustering and extension, reflecting ecological processes of adaptation and continuity.

Meerithic considers the permeability between air and water, surface and depth. This fluidity destabilises fixed boundaries and reinforces an understanding of environment and organism as interdependent. Situated within contemporary discussions of new materialism and ecological practice, Meerithic proposes an alternative framework for thinking. One grounded in relation, porosity, and slow transformation.

These works ask for a different kind of attention: one that is patient, sensory, and open to ambiguity. They invite the viewer to move away from control and towards participation, to recognise themselves not as observers of a system, but as already within it.

Meerithic is about more than the experience of longing to be in the sea.

It is about the conditions that allow life to form, transform, and continue. To quietly, persistently emerge in relation to everything around it.