Seepage: On Drains and Eye Floaters, a Master of Fine Arts examination exhibition, MADA Gallery Monash University.
16-19th September, 2026.
Documentation by Christian Capurro
Seepage: On Eye Floaters and Drains is an investigation into a bodily metaphor I call ‘the floater,’ which I use as an artistic methodology to make work responding to my grandfather Gábor’s drainage engineering home movies. The concept of the floater is based on my visual experience of having eye floaters, the mobile opacities in the gel of my eye that are a visual problem, a distraction that I can’t escape but can’t see clearly. The floater is at once a concrete object (a knot in my eye), an experience of distraction, a symbolic vehicle, and an artistic logic.
How might making and thinking through the floater structure an approach to drainage engineering, technological perception, climate anxiety, water and family history?
The artistic research for this project—spanning drawing, film, solvent transfer and performance— investigates how to represent the floater, but also how to use its characteristics (mobility, distraction, elusiveness) to structure the compositional decisions around layering and fragmentation I use in the studio. Using the floater as a lens to focus on various dimensions of distraction and noise brings out an emphasis on instability, mediation, and situated perspective.
The title, Seepage, is taken from the intertitles of Gábor’s films. Much of his work as a drainage engineer was to prevent forms of water seepage around drainage structures, which could destabilise and erode the structures and surrounding ground. In this sense, seepage indicates where water ‘shouldn’t’ be, as well as the difficulty of controlling it. Perhaps seepage is the non-bodily reflection of the floater, one that emphasises slippery wateriness and porous boundaries—but also the desire for control, or stability.