Established in 2022, the Judy Wheeler Commission is a ten-year program made possible through a philanthropic gift to PICA by the Simpson Family. It funds an annual site-specific work by an Australian visual artist that responds physically or conceptually to the architecture and history of the PICA building, embodying PICA’s spirit of risk and experimentation, and celebrating art’s power to connect people and places through curiosity, perspective and storytelling. 

Jen Berean and James Carey’s Soft Grates is the fourth in the Judy Wheeler Commission series and invites visitors to contemplate how institutions mark time and hold memory through the presence of water. Continuing their collaborative exploration of architecture, infrastructures and embedded systems, the duo aims to reveal the unseen networks that move water through and around PICA’s location in Boorloo (Perth). 

Their three-part installation will feature a sculptural intervention that sees water slowly drip into vessels over the duration of the year. These vessels draw a conceptual link to the civic infrastructure that enables the movement and management of water across Boorloo and beyond. This durational work encourages audiences to reflect on our relationship to the slow-moving, temporal and fragility of water systems. 

Additionally, a sound-based work composed of recordings of water throughout the PICA building will be amplified within the gallery interiors, encouraging moments of pause and reflection, and inviting a deeper engagement with the presence of water within the space. A third work will explore the economic and environmental realities of water use within PICA via a floor-based sculpture made from copper that references the building’s internal plumbing and reflects the dollar value of PICA’s annual water consumption.