EXHIBITION OPENING NIGHT | Bridget Hillebrand: Tidal

Tidal brings together a new body of work by Melbourne-based artist Bridget Hillebrand, shaped by close and repeated encounters with water. Here, water is approached as a condition: rhythmic, unstable and beyond human control. The tide becomes the visible effect of forces held elsewhere, setting the terms for looking, making and being in place.

Developed through recent residencies on a floating studio at Lake Tyers in East Gippsland and along the Shoalhaven River at Bundanon, the works arise from sustained proximity to tidal environments. Their continual give and take is felt through shifts in visibility, unstable ground, and traces of contact, pressure and return.

Through printmaking, ink and folded paper, Hillebrand works with repetition as a way of registering change. Acts of marking, layering and folding echo the cyclical motion of currents, sediment and tidal flow, with the surface holding the evidence of movement over time.

Rather than picturing water as a fixed subject, Tidal attends to the conditions that move through it. The exhibition considers making as a practice of attunement, shaped by pull, pressure, return and the unseen forces that determine what comes to the surface.