LightWater, 2025

LightWater, 2025

​

LightWater is a site-responsive installation that employs light to reveal the movement and depth of water, advancing Johns-Messenger’s exploration of perception in public space. Responding to its environment, the work unfolds gradually as daylight recedes, interrogating the fundamental interplay between light, water, and human perception. Rooted in phenomenology, Johns-Messenger’s practice examines spatial perception through site-determined interventions that disrupt assumed architectural experience. These works operate at the threshold of subject and object, using optical physics and material paradoxes to destabilise perception. By integrating real-time image capture and spatial manipulations, they dissolve distinctions between artwork and site, prioritising direct experience over objecthood. Natasha Johns-Messenger is an Australian/American installation artist and filmmaker based in Naarm/Melbourne and New York. Her work reconfigures space through architectural interventions and optical phenomena, altering how environments are perceived and understood. This project was made possible with support from Dan and Liza Wollmering, Glyn Davis and Margaret Gardner, Ute and Dieter Martin, and the Lorne Friendship Group, with assistance from Swing Bridge Café. — Catalogue excerpt by Simon Lawrie

​

Venue and exhibition: Lorne Sculpture Biennale, Erskine River Estuary Picnic Area & Beach, Lorne, Australia, curated by Simon Lawrie

​

Year: 2025

Media: led light, led driver, existing beach

 

Dimensions: Light rectangle: 5.2m x 52m 

​

​