WITHOUT REASON

Nicholas Folland

December 11th - February 13th 2010 | CCAS Goman

Someone’s left the water running. In the bath, the sink, the toilet too. The bathroom is flooded. So much so it threatens to set adrift, the floor pitching with a sickening tilt.

Beneath a single light bulb in a darkened corner a domestic bathroom is exposed as a victim of its own incapacity. Come alive by mysterious means, or perhaps as the result of human carelessness, this familiar, homely scene is now threatening and distorted. Melancholic strains of Greig’s Holberg Suite Opus 40 join the rushing of water in an inescapable aural assault.

In a nation where water is a rare commodity, this dramatic outpouring smacks of decadence. Confronted with such loss the emotions move from shame to anger, before giving way to panic. Water, with its dual power to give life and to take it away, is ultimately one of nature’s most uncontrollable forces. Rushing forth unchecked it heralds disaster and calamity. (Yolande Norris, 2009)

Image: Nicholas Folland, Raft (Installation detail), 2005,