Tania Kovats: Head to Mouth
Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations, writing and large-scale projects that explore our experience, understanding and relationship with the natural world. Recently she has focused on water as her central subject, the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, flooding and tides, necessarily touching on environmental concerns.
For this new body of work at the Gymnasium Gallery, Kovat’s has explored water as a boundary, both psychological and physical with particular reference to how the River Tweed has acted as a geopolitical boundary.
New works include Head in Mouth, a water collection work from the source and mouth of the River Tweed; and UNION with water that Kovats collected beneath Union Chain Bridge that spans the border between England and Scotland.
Continuing with Kovats series of publications that are portraits of different rivers she has also made a unique set of newspaper drawings called TWEED Border Ballad, with drawings and writing from her journeys along the River Tweed. The work tells a supernatural love story with the Tam Lane border ballad as its starting point.
You can read the TWEED Border Ballads online here
Finally, Kovats’ is presenting a new set of figurative sculptures, Divers are works cast in concrete using wetsuits as moulds. These inverted aquatic figures reflect on our liquid selves and the experience of our own physical boundaries in water.