The element of water is a vital force that defines planetary geography, etching the landscape and defining the continents. It moves through disparate sectors of the globe as precipitation – mist, rain, sleet and snow.

As humans, we are bound within nature’s water cycle – perspiring and transpiring. It is the main component of our bodily fluids, which carry essential nutrients to the organs and remove toxic wastes. Our physical and psychological states are, like the tidal movement of rivers and oceans, affected by the moon’s gravitational forces. Water flows from the environment into the body and vice versa.

This two-part exhibition explores the aesthetics of water, its ebb and flow as a global life force. In Prelude to Oceans From Here the aerial views of tidal movements, by Julia Davis, create mesmerising patterns on coastal sands. Dean Cross symbolically returns to Country through the act of apply and removing ochre to his half-immersed body. While the ‘Instagram perfect’ photographs taken by Grant Stevens represent a solitary quest to witness the power of cascading water.

Our response to water, from visceral and cerebral to sacred and somatic, is the focus of Oceans from here. The influence of lunar forces on the counterpoise of euphoria and depression underpin Chris Bennie’s Mood swings. In Honey Long + Prue Stent’s performance-based works human forms emerge from, and are subsumed by, watery environs.

John Young Zerunge photographs of the Antarctic echo the aesthetics of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Kai Wasikowski travelled to the melting glaciers of New Zealand in search of the source of the Pacific Ocean, while Emma Hamilton heads north to frame the horizon of the Arctic seas.