CrystalWalled Seas
Through a Glass, Lightly
By Garth Johnson
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Along with countless pandemic puppies and Covid kittens that were adopted over the course of the COVID-19 lockdown, it is estimated that the saltwater aquarium industry grew by almost 90%.1 This should come as no surprise, since the context for the home aquarium in western culture has morphed and changed with every decade to reflect society’s mores. Home aquariums
were popularized in the 1850s as an outgrowth of the Victorian craze for “Ward’s cases”, early terrariums for ferns that provided self-contained, miniature worlds to help residents block out the squalor and pollution of urban London.
The Arizona-based collaborative duo of Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis, better known as Future Retrieval, are
Surely the very whispering of the breeze that has travelled so far over that vast moving surface of the fathomless deep, and which seems muttering of its mysteries, while laden with its sweet saline odour— ce parfum acre de la mer” as Dumas has termed it—might lead us towards other and higher trains of thought.
- Noel Humphreys, Ocean Gardens (1857)
He who is staring at the sea is already sailing a little.
- Paul Carvel
”
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no strangers to self-contained worlds. Their art practice is rooted in the cloistered study of institutional and cultural archives, and then reified through shared labor in the studio. Over the fifteen years of their collaboration as Future Retrieval, the duo has probed such disparate realms as mycological cultivation, hothouse palace intrigue, Arcadian landscapes, Arts and Crafts-era interiors, and 17th century Cabinets of Curiosity.
diversions from the blistering heat that range from indoor malls and theme restaurants to the proliferation of backyard pools that dot the valley.
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Their budding obsession with the home aquarium parallels the seismic upheavals in their personal life—the birth of twin babies, coupled with a move from their longtime base of Cincinnati to the desert environs of Scottsdale, Arizona. With temperatures that can reach 120 degrees in the summer, Arizona is home to a flourishing home aquarium community—part of a larger ecosystem of escapist
Unsurprisingly, the complex history of the home aquarium comes with its own body of literature. The earliest tomes that emerged from Victorian London were written in the mold of Philip Henry Gosse’s Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea (1854), which lays out a contemporary body of research into the propagation of plant and marine life and offers up practical tips like, “In London, seawater may be easily obtained by giving a trifling fee to the master or steward of any of the steamers that ply beyond the mouth of the Thames, charging him to dip it in the clear open sea, beyond the reach of rivers,”2 but also leaves plenty of space for philosophy and travelogue-
style writing. Gosse writes impactfully about his own experiences rambling along the British coast.
Crystal-Walled Seas takes its name from H. Noel Humphreys’s florid writings that pile both lyrical flights of fancy and proscriptive admonitions about not creating a spectacle for “vulgar eyes.”3 Humphreys was not alone in his hand-wringing about the role of the home aquarium. Victorian writers in Britain took great pains to ensure that the endeavor of building an aquarium was seen as a legitimate scientific pursuit. Americans, on the other hand, immediately positioned the aquarium as a hobby venture that could easily be turned into a business. While the British aquarium offered a platform for self-reflection and scientific inquiry, Americans emphasized either recreation, didactic education, or even the use of the aquarium as a tool for social reform.4
for Future Retrieval as any cultural archive. Despite H. Noel Humphreys’s protestations about “vulgar eyes,” aquariums have always had a theatrical element, immersing their viewers in a fantasy world. Humphreys himself wrote that “…in fact, they are not, or the visitor to the seaside, looking over that wide tremulous expanse of water that covers so many mysteries, would feel, like the child taken for the first time within the walls of a theatre, an intense anxiety to raise the dark green curtain which conceals the scene of fairy wonders he is greedily longing to behold and enjoy.”5
The abundance of slippage between worlds and meanings makes the aquarium as fertile of a site of inquiry
Chief among the artifacts of Crystal-Walled Seas that exploit this connection are Future Retrieval’s Swim Through sculptures. These peculiar domestic objects mirror the materiality and display strategies of Chinese scholar rocks—transportive bits of weathered limestone meant to evoke the alien beauty of the Southern Chinese landscape. The Swim Through series also marks a break with the elaborate industrial techniques the duo has used to construct their miniature worlds.
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Instead of 3D scanning and CNC milling, its forms take shape from simple cut paper, and are laboriously hand-modeled using the simplest of tools. The stoneware glazes used on the pieces amplify Future Retrieval’s careful sense of craft with an array of colorful hand-cut decals that sometimes sit on the surface of the piece, but are often subjected to multiple firings until they are almost subsumed into liquid, miasmic surfaces.
The Swim Through sculptures are accentuated by another series of sculptures that exploit the tension between the natural world and the built environment. Vegetation of the Marine Aquarium takes its self-explanatory title from a chapter in Humphreys’s book. Various silhouettes of seaweeds and other aquatic plants are given a graphic emphasis through being water jet cut from aluminum, then powder coated in vibrant colors. In contrast to the Swim Through series,
which are organic shapes that flow from a geometric base, the Vegetation series uses casually balled-up chunks of unglazed clay to offset the twodimensional aluminum shapes.
As is their custom, Future Retrieval use cut paper to serve as a through line for their thoughts and research. Crystal-Walled Seas contains an array of hand-cut wallpapers that draws from their experience as research fellows in Cincinnati’s Lloyd Library.
Their interpretations of illustrations by H. Noel Humphreys, Elizabeth Twining, and James Sowerby literally become wallpaper, but subvert the domestic space and the language of material culture through the application of scientific imagery drawn from the corpus of writing about the domestic aquarium.
Although latch hook and shagged rugs often evoke hazy memories of 1970s bong room décor, they have their roots
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in 1850s Victorian Britain, as does the home aquarium. In the low-tech, high touch spirit of Ocean Gardens, Future Retrieval have created a five-foot hand knotted wool rug that reinforces the intertwined garden and undersea imagery that the wallpaper draws on. The effect of The Garden Tapestry is similar to their miasmic glaze effects, softening the hard edges of the exhibition’s cut paper aesthetic, further inviting reverie and reflection on the part of the viewer.
Crystal-Walled Seas marks a new chapter in the work of Future Retrieval. Where earlier exhibitions and projects served as densely-woven tapestries of research, labor, and industrial innovation, this exhibition provides
the duo with the ability to wear their rigorous process lightly. Befitting its muse, the home aquarium, there are more points of entry for the casual viewer, more avenues for its constituent parts to take a potent place within the domestic spheres of new owners.
Future Retrieval telegraphed their new momentum and direction in the title of the exhibition, which is drawn from Victorian writings that emphasize the interiority of the aquarium owner, with the aquarium serving as a vehicle for self-reflection and self-betterment. Future Retrieval have spent the past decade and a half exploring our material culture, but increasingly, they are learning to harness their skill set to explore fantasy, phenomenology, and the worlds within.
1 Whiteside B. Dive in: Saltwater aquariums are hobby, as well as colorful home decor. TCA Regional News. Nov 23, 2021. 2 Gosse, Philip Henry. The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. by Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. “the Sea Is His, and He Made It.” Ps. XCV. 5. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. John Van Voorst, Paternoster Row, 1856.3 Humphreys, Henry Noel. Ocean Gardens: The History of the Marine Aquarium, and the Best Methods Now Adopted for Its Establishment and Preservation. Second Edition, Enlarged and Corrected by the Author ; River Gardens: Being an Account of the Best Methods of Cultivating Fresh-Water Plants in Aquaria, in Such a Manner as to Afford Suitable Abodes to Ornamental Fish, and Many Interesting Kinds of Aquatic Animals. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1857.
4 Hamera, Judith. Parlor Ponds the Cultural Work of the American Home Aquarium, 18501970. University of Michigan Press, 2012.
5 Humphreys, Henry Noel. Ocean Gardens. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1857. VIII.
Garth Johnson is the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Curator of Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Johnson is a self-described craft activist who explores craft’s influence and relevance in the 21st century. His research interests range from 1960s and 70s artist-led movements in the field of ceramics to the intersection of clay, video, and performance. His recent exhibitions at the Everson include The Floating Bridge: Postmodern and Contemporary Japanese Ceramics, Renegades & Reformers: American Art Pottery, and Earth Piece: Conceptual and Performative Works in Clay. His writing has been published nationally and internationally, with recent contribution to the books Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City is Nature and Victor Cicansky: The Gardener’s Universe
Future Retrieval
Crystal-Walled Seas
APRIL 22 - JUNE 4, 2022
DENNY DIMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK
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Cover: Future Retrieval
The Garden, Panel IV (detail), 2022
Hand cut paper 55 x 33 in/140 x 84w cm
I. Future Retrieval
Swim Through, Floral Puff, 2022
Stoneware
19 x 17 x 12.5 in/48 x 43 x 32 cm
II. Future Retrieval
Swim Through, Drop, 2022
Stoneware 22 x 14 x 13 in/56 x 36 x 33 cm
III. Future Retrieval
Adaptation, Spectacle, 2022
Stoneware and tamise leaf
16.5 x 10.5 x 8.5 in/42 x 27 x 22 cm
IV. Future Retrieval
Swim Through, Moss, 2022
Stoneware
19 x 17 x 12.5 in/48 x 43 x 32 cm
V. Future Retrieval
Vegetation of the Marine Aquarium VIII, 2022
Powder coated aluminum, stoneware
12.75 x 5 x 4 in/32 x 13 x 10 cm
VI. Future Retrieval
The Garden, 2022
Hand cut paper
Each panel 55 x 33 in/140 x 84 cm
VII. Future Retrieval
Adaptation, Bubbler, 2021
Stoneware and porcelain
16 x 14 x 7 in/41 x 36 x 18 cm
VIII. Future Retrieval
The Garden Tapestry, 2021
Wool 60 x 34 x 1 in/152 x 86 x 3 cm
IX. Future Retrieval
Adaptation, Slouch, 2022
Stoneware and overglaze decals
21.5 x 9.5 x 8 in/55 x 24 x 20 cm
DENNY DIMIN
IMAGES
All artwork © Future Retrieval and Courtesy Denny Dimin Gallery. Text © Garth Johnson.
GALLERY