Emma Fielden’s ‘Confluence’ diptychs bring the mark-making and substrate materials of drawing into equilibrium while alluding to points of union in nature, bodies and minds. Here, ink and paper shape each other. To make these works, Fielden drips ink upon the centres of two conjoined sheets of paper, swaying them together until the ink pools meet at the junction of the sheets. At the moment of union, the sheets of paper are separated. The thick ink slowly dries and shrinks, reshaping the paper in its wake. The two pools of ink and the two sheets of paper are forever joined but never quite together again.

Australian poet Carol Jenkins says: “we might call them pour-spills, flow-mills, ink-wells or puddle-pours of Sumi ink. Each of the pair flows away and into the other, making conversations that come up to the brink, to an edge. They nudge, in a calculating way, at limits. Is the auto-sheen gloss of Sumi ink a hypnotic Rorschach test, is each pair with their uneven pattern perhaps a nod at the asymmetries of marriage? They suggest worm holes, having the absolute blackness of nothingness, but without the existential angst that black holes evoke.” (Read Carol Jenkins’ essay here).