OCEANS attends to the inextricable human and nonhuman agencies that affect and are affected by the oceans and their running currents within contemporary art and visual culture.

OCEANS attends to the inextricable human and nonhuman agencies that affect and are affected by the sea and its running currents within contemporary art and visual culture.

Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface, dividing and connecting humans, who carry saltwater in their blood, sweat, and tears. At the same time, oceans represent a powerful nonhuman force, rising, flooding, heating, and raging in unprecedented ways as the climate crisis unfolds. The sea has long enthralled artists, who have envisioned it as a sublime wilderness, a home to countless mythical creatures as well as bizarre real species, a source of life and death, a site of new beginnings and tragic endings, a force both wondrous and disastrous. From migration to the melting of the polar ice caps, the sea is omnipresent in international news and politics, leaking into popular culture in the wake of the "Blue Planet effect" and proliferating in contemporary art and visual culture.

This collection gathers together some of today's most exciting contemporary artists and writers to address the ocean not only as a theme but as a major agent of artistic and curatorial methods.

Artists surveyed include

Bas Jan Ader, Eileen Agar, John Akomfrah, Eva Barois De Caevel, Betty Beaumont, Heidi Bucher, Marcus Coates, Tacita Dean, Mark Dion, Ellen Gallagher, Ayesha Hameed, Barbara Hepworth, Klara Hobza, Isuma, Brian Jungen, Ana Mendieta, Kasia Molga, Eleanor Morgan, Wangechi Mutu, Jean Painlevé and Geneviève Hamon, Zineb Sedira, Shimabuku, Christine & Margaret Wertheim, Alberta Whittle.

Writers include
Stacy Alaimo, Michelle Antoinette, Bergit Arends, Erika Balsom, Karen Barad, Rachel Carson, Marion Endt-Jones, Kodwo Eshun, Vilém Flusser, Paul Gilroy, Epeli Hau'ofa, Eva Hayward, Stefanie Hessler, Luce Irigaray, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Celina Jeffrey, Koyo Kouoh, Lana Lopesi, Jules Michelet, Astrida Neimanis, Celeste Olalquiaga, Ralph Rugoff, John Ruskin, Marina Warner.
About the Author: Pandora Syperek is a writer and art historian who researches the intersections of art and science, gender, and the nonhuman within cultures of display. She is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Loughborough University London and Visiting Fellow at the V&A Research Institute.

Sarah Wade is an art historian and Lecturer in Museums Studies at University of East Anglia where she teaches on modules spanning art history, gallery and museum studies, curatorial studies, and cultural heritage.