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Scientists use such indices as the figuring of causes for which they may seek effects, as a clue of the consequences of causation; they are seeking to explain the world, to find patterns in processes. Scientists, like artists, are concerned to trace resemblances. The counter-current turbulence in the Devon river configures like the whorl of the spiral nebula; in the apparent chaos of diverse events and constant motion we sense order. Where the scientist seeks to bring into practical understanding what technologies of observation have discovered, the artist has a different purpose; to create and nurture a sense of wonder at the phenomenal world, and to intensify our imaginative experience of it. These photograms of river and shoreline waters and the sky seen through them are at once revelations of a particular and unrepeatable moment in nature, and images that invite our recognition of resemblance and analogy. . Eye of the Storm - Susan Derges - Biography and Abstract EVOLUTION OF FORM Susan Derges Biography Susan Derges is an artist living and working in Devon and a research member of the "Coast Group", University of Plymouth, where she is a lecturer in Media Arts. A publication titled "River Taw" accompanying the show is available through Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London. Abstract What is the relationship between inner and outer, mental and physical, subjective and objective experience. If they are all part of one continuous (and creative) process how can this be visualised.

Large formats and a disrupted sense of dimension allow the images of the details of reality to refer also to its grander structure, to suggest that all matter follows the same fundamental rhythms. This disc is set in a drum and rotated by a pull cord so that the film would be swept in time, just like the radar. Shells and worm casts here and there, bird claw imprints and pebbles, finally penetrate such wilder impressions, and allow us to recognise carefully studied observations of the microcosm of a tidal river bed. These images seem strangely unconnected with their subject matter. We share the concentrated view of a microscope or telescope user, and at the same time take on their unsentimental relationship with the subject which is chosen objectively or at random.

Susan Derges studied at the Chelsea School of Art and Design and the Slade School of Fine Art. Much of her work is photographically based, often making exposures directly onto photographic paper without the use of a camera. River flows, melting ice and the growth and motion of tadpoles have all been recorded in this way. Such sequences of photograms take direct inspiration from nature, but Derges's work has also been pursued in experimental contrivances more reminiscent of the laboratory. She has produced a series of Chladni figures and, in a setup borrowed from the physics demonstrations of C.
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