Copyright brisbanetimes
The Pool Show includes loans from the Art Gallery of NSW – David Hockney’s Water pouring into swimming pool, Santa Monica (1964), four works from Tracey Moffat’s Fourth pool series (2001), Max Dupain’s Swimmers at Newport (1952) and Harold Cazneaux’s Dee Why Pool II (1934) – as well as works by several emerging western Sydney artists including Asistin’s watercolour and acrylic paintings of Mt Druitt pool. Gallery director Toby Chapman says the swimming pool is not merely a place of leisure and relaxation. “It’s a site where the politics of our time play out; where your race, postcode, gender or sexuality can be determinants for who can swim, and how they are treated in the pool.” Artist and writer JD Reforma rummaged through his family’s photo albums for colour-faded holiday snaps from the Philippines, which he has etched onto metal mirrors used in public pools. Marian Abboud and The Seed of Hope Collective look at migrant and refugee women’s relationship to water, including the Assyrian Women’s Swim Club, an older group of women learning to swim at Granville Pool. “I definitely think it’s keeping up with their kids, and not missing out,” Abboud says. “The women I’m working with now are really embracing things in their life a lot more than when they were younger, and there’s this freedom in being able to float in water that we take for granted.”
