Art with impact
Without a voice, we are just consuming. Taking, not giving back. Art with Impact celebrates the beauty of the world beneath the waves and raise awareness of coral reefs and support their conservation
Philosophy
Nautilus II Exhibition
Thursday March 31 to Sunday Apr 03, 2022
Badt and Co. at Joo Chiat – Flagship Store, 290A Joo Chiat Rd, Singapore 427542
Free. To support COVID measures, kindly reserve a date and time online.
To support Covid measures, please kindly reserve a timeslot for your chosen day and time at the booking link, above.
Nautilus is a series of 11 stunning acrylic and mixed media artworks on canvas by Husk, upcycled contemporary ceramics by Conley, and iconic fashion collectibles by Rehyphen® that call upon the viewer to consider our amazing environment, all its flora and fauna, and relationship with the reef.
Exciting ceramic works by multi-talented New Zealand artist Conley feature in the exhibition. Each art piece is formed with sand from beaches facing environmental change and adorned with Husk’s marine life forms.
Rehyphen® pioneered an up-cycling initiative whereby they collect discarded cassette tapes and weave them into a piece of MusicCloth® to reduce and eliminate electronic waste. For Nautilus, the team have created haute couture accessories from the recordings of Husk.
Collections
500 million. This is the number of seabirds population today, which used to be 1.5 billion. Trawler’s overfishing, bilge waters, habitat change – all this directly affects the reproduction and life expectancy of seabirds. Seabirds appears to be brushed over the ocean canvas and woven from thousands of painterly feathers hovering over its depths. Like a cyclone of snow-white clouds, like a whirlwind of the sea breeze, an endless flock of seabirds fascinates the eye. Husk depicts large soft velvety feathers of seabirds using paste-like strokes. Also, she works on tiny details such as the thickness and hue of the feathers – we might notice this beauty watching a seabird fly. The authentic look of coastal and nesting seabirds feathers doesn’t go unnoticed. The feather cloud that transcends the canvas reminds us that beauty is limitless, but it becomes limited when it disappears.
Global warming and pollution critically affect coral reef life. The most dangerous environmental phenomenon for them is the overheating of sea waters, which occurs due to atmospheric warming and pollution. Husk depicts the ocean’s royal blue matte depth with colour layers. The most beautiful reefs with varicoloured and swishing tips are often located at the depths. On canvas, the reef creates beautiful ocean vibrations with its tips. Еye of the Reef is about looking at the problem with reefs’ eyes. They are calling us to pay attention to how they sound when they are still full of colour and life.
This artwork is a continuation of the painting Eye of the Reef. The coral reef weeps, washed out by a powerful stream of colours and shades. An illuminating halo as the virgin Mary’s crown emits subtle vibrations of weeping spread in small particles in the ocean layers. Husk came up with the idea of using this religious imagery in Eye of the Reef II, recalling her singing in the world’s most glorious churches. Using the imagery of the halo as crown on the Virgin Mary and also the halos seen on the martyrs – both of these images are linked with feelings of grief and repentance and redemption. The earth gives us the best by sacrificing itself. She has given too much, though, and now our flora and fauna are crying out for help. This painting looks straight at the viewer from the far blue depths, pouring out its pleas for compassion beyond the canvas. The colourful tears of coral reefs write the unfolding drama of global warming and ocean pollution. Husk depicts the ocean’s royal blue matte depth with colour layers. The most beautiful reefs with varicoloured and swishing tips are often located at the depths. On canvas, the reef creates beautiful ocean vibrations with its tips. Еye of the Reef is about looking at the problem with reefs’ eyes. They are calling us to pay attention to how they sound when they are still full of colour and life.
Coastal waters used to be magical places of relaxation, joy, and inspiration. Today, many of them are full of rubbish. Bottles, fishing nets, bags, plastic straws, and other debris arriving with the tide become a new decoration for the beaches and raise a problem for the marine fauna in coastal waters. The idea to use hand-thrown details for this painting came to Husk from childhood when she created miniatures with her sisters as a hobby. The sea reminded her of the unadulterated joy, with its big, clean, salty tides to play in. Now, it’s full of floating personal items, in addition to ordinary garbage, in the once clean coastal areas. The mini-creations used by Husk emphasise the anthropogenic impact of water pollution. In Gaia’s theory, everything organic and inorganic coexists in such a way as to maintain life on the planet. The Earth seems to be spitting out an endless stream of garbage – this is the way to detoxification, and this process is audible. The presence of miniatures creates a particular sound of rustling and splashing debris in coastal waters. Even banknotes here become the musical notes murmuring with the tide. You can feel the play of contrast between the Earth and its background, which seems to be a bottomless dead-silent ocean’s matte floor. However, the multiple impasto words and musical symbols are hidden at the bottom of this oceanic canvas. A polyphony between the ocean abyss and detoxing Earth is called a Gaia’s Cleansing. This painting looks straight at the viewer from the far blue depths, pouring out its pleas for compassion beyond the canvas. The colourful tears of coral reefs write the unfolding drama of global warming and ocean pollution. Husk depicts the ocean’s royal blue matte depth with colour layers. The most beautiful reefs with varicoloured and swishing tips are often located at the depths. On canvas, the reef creates beautiful ocean vibrations with its tips. Еye of the Reef is about looking at the problem with reefs’ eyes. They are calling us to pay attention to how they sound when they are still full of colour and life.
Bilge water from ships contaminates the marine environment. The particles contained in these emissions affect the aquatic microflora and its inhabitants. A bubbling display of this reality is clearly seen in Jassy Husk’s Black & Gold Bilge Waters. Greasy, insoluble, vague, stretchy forms of colour rise as drops of gasoline, oil, solvents, and other chemicals in bilge water. The same colour forms represent separation, settling, dissolution, migration, and absorption processes. Each brushstroke tends to become an endlessly moving form adjoining the flow around it. The six-fold segmentation of this artwork conveys the sense that the ecological problem of ocean pollution is expanding. Each segment is unique; which is why the work is the most sincere narrative of what happens to seawater with each discharge of bilge water: each discharge and effect from it is different, but the overall problem is always the same. Like vibrant notes between staves musical lines, the nine parts of this canvas sound like a sad but gorgeous ballad called
“Music sets up a certain vibration which unquestionably results in a physical reaction. Eventually, the proper vibration for every person will be found and utilized”, said George Gershwin. Not all sound waves are distinct and perceivable. Regardless, they are still present around us, and our body communicates with them on a subtle energy level. As a child, Jassy was deaf for some time, and she perceived the sound as a visual form and substance. An incredible world of details, sliding along the canvas’s mounds and creating entire universes of discoveries, opens up while looking at this painting. If you follow these sensations, you can hear multiple brush taps. This is how dot mosaic backgrounds and abstract paste-like designs sound in Sound Wave artwork. The spine-shaped vertical shows us an ephemeral sound body. To the viewer, it seems that the notes come from within, spilling out in space. The more amplified the sound, the denser it becomes. Note keys form in the air and then become the air. The ephemeral body consisting of wave splashes, ocean creature vibrations and sounds, air bubbles, and fish movement noise becomes the pure symphony, the pure environment, the new intensity.
Under the Sea Barnacle is one of the richest, brightest, most intense, inspiring, and detailed artworks in the collection. The diversity of microflora and its constant movement, the waves of diamond sand caressing the seabed, the algae and corals’ performance while dancing to the ocean music – this is what Sea Billy Barnacle feels when stroking the ocean bottom with his belly. The ocean is alive with melodic and joyful colour. The melody in music is composed of sounds merging, overlapping, and transforming. The fruitiness of colour is what we see in this artwork. The colour here embodies music tenderness, intimacy, integrity, purposefulness. Colour layers are not just an artist signature or skillful technique – they are visual narratives that bring the viewer closer to experience marine life.
The absolute elegance and sophistication of this painting are eye-catching. Husk favours working in ink, and this is the only black and white painting in the Nautilus II collection. The transparency of the work visually emphasises important details – balance, hierarchy, movement, harmony, sequence. The sea urchin is the perfect embodiment of all these terms – it feeds on the algae around and coral reefs, thus clearing the space for the coral reefs and their herbivorous guests – parrotfish and rabbitfish. Like a vital part of the ecosystem, like an ideally designed clock of the universe, the figure of a sea urchin floats on canvas. The beautiful ecosystem is disappearing, and time is running out. Sometimes urchins’ presence is visible, sometimes almost invisible, merging with the plankton layer of acrylic paint. The urchin floats through the sea labyrinth of the night ocean, following its rhythm and leaving a dotted trajectory on its endless canvas space. The perfection of life rhythm lies in the balance. What a unique universe unites us.
The symmetry, harmony, and uniqueness of forms observed in nature are amazing. The hydrologists enjoy this beauty by studying the earth’s water and watching it from above and at the depths of the oceans. To understand and feel beauty, it is unnecessary to be a hydrologist – we just need to pay more attention to all life forms. The concept of hydrology used in the artwork is here-and-now observation, immersion in boundless endless layers of water resources, acceptance of ocean and sea as works of art. Sea treasures cover us with gold and silver splashes. They play with the hot sun rays and come to our feet, foaming and sizzling. When in contact with sand, seawater becomes the most versatile colour palette, living just one instant – that’s what the magic of water is. Hot sand is destined to cool down and dance with the mother-of-pearl wave of the immense ocean. Their interaction makes beautiful music. Hydrologic is not about the lines’ precisions, symmetry, or colour. This is a narrative of reality, captured as the perfect combination of three aesthetically pleasing elements – seawater, waves, and sand. Only when you see them arriving one after another can you appreciate the moment’s uniqueness and combine it visually with sound.
A Galaxy of Creation represents a unique natural phenomenon – the fertilisation of coral reef offspring. A process that only lasts two or three days – and only happens to corals that have not suffered bleaching due to unusually warm ocean temperatures. Jassy Husk, in her artworks, accurately conveys the rhythm, movement, and range, being a professional musician and singer. In A Galaxy of Creation, time stops. It’s all about the technique of brushstrokes, their shape, and their size. Some “reef” branches are smooth, while others are more prominent and convex. The extreme branches become multicoloured, shimmering from one colour to another, creating a separation and transformation effect. All Husk’s paintings are stories with many details. A Galaxy of Creation is about closely studying coral reefs’ shapes, colours, trajectories of eggs, and their coral branches. Also, it’s about watching the luminous, silent movement of eggs in the sea from above. The beautiful story becomes a beautiful memory. Memory helps change the sense of time, which is why Jassy endeavors to keep the coral reefs’ memory alive in the painting’s multiple colour layers.
Collections
Philosophy
Jussy husk
Philanthropist.
/jassyhusk