"Sea fear, disorientation and solitude are strong themes driving the work and occasionally provoke these responses in viewing. Some experiences that contribute to ones idea of seas have not yet been accessed in the work. Saline water blocking one's ears and compulsive erratic breathing in the cold may help to define new imaginary waters. Involuntary sinking and buoyancy in these waters are important aspects visually, but these also contribute to the thematic concepts.

The colour photographs seen have been drawn from waters in the Baltic, Atlantic, North Sea and the Bay of Biscay. In order to study the conditions that exist beyond first impressions, other studies have been made. These involve different mediums and processes that introduce other ways of seeing.

To see as one entirely passive to the water it is necessary to observe for longer than a moment. Unlike the momentary visions of water seen here, the pinhole cameras that floated in the sea until rescued or beached captured within themselves an image of movement. That image represents the period of time spent at sea. Through the pinhole studies, the sun acts as a pen in the hand of the sea.

With the help of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency and from Mario Marine, radar was used to follow the movements of vessels across water, along the apparently two-dimensional plane that acts as an oceanic motorway for the vessels to whom marine traffic separation schemes apply. Open water is merely co-ordinates and horizon for those others.

These surveys were commissioned for international traffic regulation, but inadvertently recorded intricacies within the movements of small sailing and fishing vessels. The paths, which can all be seen to have sustained deliberation, appear abstract without context. Each of the vessels' hidden objectives tell an imaginary story about the water.

In conjunction, these separated and yet entirely inter-reliant groups of work bring part of the condition away from its origin. In doing so, the conditions are subject to reinterpretation thereby creating more imaginary water.

Nonetheless, imaginary waters, the blind ones where even the sea blinked, ones that might have happened, ones that escaped the camera are far more exciting, stronger and definitely bigger. They also for the measure by which all the rest are compared, and mark the limit beyond which there is no more."

Giles Gilbert, December 2005