Above image: James Geurts, Drawing Horizon, 2010. Site and time specific light installation. Solar powered fluorescent tubes at various temperatures from warm to cool. Illuminated at the threshold of day and night, at the point of the mid tide and half moon, 10m x 1m x 1m, North Sea, Satellietgroep, Den Haag Netherlands

Text: Fiona Gruber
Photography: James Geurts

Australian artist James Geurts’ fascination for light and water is central to what he describes as an extended drawing practice.

Tidal zones, fault lines, horizons, meridians, and other conceptual lines and markers of place all figure prominently in his work.

Past projects include the 90 Degrees Equatorial Project in 2007, which involved erecting and photographing a triangular form at four points, 90 degrees apart along the equator at specific times; 100 degrees East, 4pm, Sumatra; 10 degrees East, 10pm Gabon; 80 degrees West, 4am Ecuador and 170 degrees East 10am Kiritimati Atoll.

Future projects include Magnetic Eclipse in the UK, a large eight-metre circular kinetic light installation, which extends out from Sun Pier in the Medway River and slowly moves with the shifting tide. The site-specific solar powered artwork will be part of Tone Festival in Medway, Kent in the summer equinox 22 to 24 June 2014.

Expanded Drawing, a solo exhibition survey of site- and time-specific light installations and works on paper, interconnects geographies across the world. It will be at Zhulong Gallery, Dallas, Texas in the US in September 2014.

Drawing Horizon, a 12-metre long shore-based installation involving a line of coloured solar-powered fluorescent tubes, is activated at the setting sun. It explores ideas of the illusion of a horizon line, the orbital path of our planet and the relation between time and light at the equinox.

The work has been shown in the Netherlands and will be installed at Waterloo Beach with FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool, England, in late 2014.

Embassy for Water is a conceptual art project, which is part of the successful bid for European Capital of Culture 2018, Leeuwarden Netherlands. Embassy for Water includes Standing Wave: Resonance of Memory, a land art light work that rises up from the flat Dutch landscape as an optical illusion of a giant resonant frequency wave.