Daniel CROOKS, Water Clocks, 2022. Multi channel HD video, with sound. Commissioned for Boola Katitjin 2022. Murdoch University Art Collection.
Daniel CROOKS
Born 1973 Hastings, New Zealand
Lives and works Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne-based artist Daniel Crooks is best known for his digital video and photographic works that capture and alter time and motion. Crooks manipulates digital imagery and footage as though it were a physical material, breaking time down frame by frame. These works expand our sense of temporality by manipulating ‘time slices’ that are normally imperceptible to the human eye.
Working with the concept ‘water is time, time is physical, time is a volume, and time is a fluid material’, Water Clocks features a range of macro and micro filmed imagery featuring water within the natural world, with a focus on reflection, refraction and inversion. Source imagery includes tides, waves, river flow and streams, as well as clouds, rain, dew, fog and steam. This imagery has been filmed in various locations including the Beeliar Wetlands, the Canning and Swan River and along the WA coast.
Crooks has noted of his work: ‘One of the central preoccupations of my practice is the consideration of time as a physical medium, and water is a subject I keep returning to. There is something in the motion of water that is utterly compelling. As a familiar substance from our everyday experience, we are intimately aware of the way water moves and behaves, making it an ideal subject for exploring alternative models of temporal perception.’