Peter Matthews

The Invisible Made Visible

2013. Salt from the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and steel box.  Length 46cm x width 28cm x height 26cm.

Day and night for six days, sixteen pots of Atlantic Ocean water were boiled and, with time, transformed into salt crystals. At random moments in this process, water that was collected from a Pacific Ocean beach in Taiwan was added to the Atlantic Ocean water, becoming indivisible and mixing the microscopic elements and particles of organic matter.  The Invisible Made Visible is an attempt to make visible and visceral what is invisible and immaterial, out-there in such immeasurable mass and volume yet impossible to contain as a whole.  After days of creating water vapour that travels upwards and back out to the ocean, millions of salt crystals have been collected.  To perceive and feel what is elusive and invisible, to catch something mysterious, through an authentic and time-based process, from the vast abyss.