The Source

By Andrew Frost

There’s an ad on TV at the moment in which a blonde woman of conventional good looks wanders through various natural setting dressed in a spangled dress, and then, while she’s strolling in the water of a tropical beach, in a spangled swimsuit. The ad is for bottled water, perhaps the most extravagant and wasteful of our society’s addictions to convenience. The extraction, bottling and transport of water has a massive environmental impact, from diminished aquifers to the carbon impact on manufacture and transport, to the plastics that end up in the ocean. Somehow the single natural resource that should be free to all becomes a life style accoutrement that is killing the planet.

J.D. Reforma’s ongoing project looks at the aesthetics qualities and role of water within culture. After his recent show Infinity Pool at MOP, in which Western lifestyle obsessions were lampooned, The Source at Mosman Art Gallery conjoins two ideas: the open source movement to utilise plastic water bottles as ad hoc light sources, and their use as elegant sculptural objects in the gallery space. Reforma’s  playful and thoughtful use of materials and found objects, and the unusually meaningful subject of his work, makes him an emerging artist to watch.

Until October 13

Mosman Art Gallery, Mosman

http://mosmanartgallery.org.au/exhibitions/jd-reforma-the-source