Contemplation on Water and Steel

Jess Conn Potegal’s 2023 Contemplations on Water and Steel is a sound-based exploration of Jeffery Rubinoff’s sculptures. In collaboration with JRSP Curator Karun Koernig on bass, keys and flute, Conn-Potegal engages with Rubinoff’s work as aural entities in this project: deploying mallets and contact microphones, he effectively plays the sculptures. The result is an assemblage of sculptural forms transposed into an auditory landscape, complimented by aural fragments from the natural environment. Sound remains the subject of Contemplations, but it is also the instrument which enables it. In eliciting sounds from the sculptural forms, as well as collecting environmental noises from the grounds of the JRSP, Conn-Potegal explores sound as an organic occurrence – both contrived and natural.