Transpiration (Offshoots) 2014

Steve Carr was the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s New Zealand Visiting Artist in 2014. As part of this residency, Carr produced a six-channel video installation Transpiration (2014). In this work, groups of carnations were spread across two gallery walls, each hovering within a field of black and making subtle, often indistinguishable, changes throughout its fifteen-minute duration. Transpiration (Offshoots) is a smaller three-channel descendant of the original installation, acquired in 2016. By utilising a plants transpiration process, Carr uses colour and time to delicately transform his materials. Off camera, each carnation sits in a mixture of water and dye, in hues of blue, pink and yellow. Using a time-lapse camera, the flowers are recorded absorbing the water through the stems and petals over a 24-hour period – a duration marked by the increased opacity of each colour. 

+Emily Hartley-Skudder
Staging Your Comeback 2020
New old stock wallpaper, digital sublimation print on microfibre, chrome towel holders, MDF, pine, aluminium and PVC trim
Courtesy of the artist and Jonathan Smart Gallery