Ever stop to wonder about the predictive element of our human brain?  For those of you who connect the dots between evolutionary neuroscience, futurist gaming theory and the history of prophecy will hardly be surprised by my claim that prediction is the sophistocated art and science of pattern recognition.  When it comes to pattern recognition, artists and designers are at the top of the game.  Case in point:

At the heart of the recent Gulf spill story and the grand epic of planetary survival, there have been smaller but no less important, eco-political dramas playing out around the world in the decades leading up to this moment in time. For instance, in a related story of “thinking blue,” our July Artist of the Month, Phillip George — Bondi Beach surfrider/artist/researcher  –  captures in an iconic image, a picture of the Ocean where cultural tradition and fashion meets head on with cultural prejudice, an image that recalls a history of cultural wars on the shorelines of ‘down undha’ against the background of global oil and water politics.  Here, I’m referring to “The Inshalla Surfboard” – the title of a suite of artworks first exhibited in 2008 (and noted on this site).  I’m also speaking to the 2005 Cronulla race riots south of Sydney, the history detailed in dribs and drabs over many conversations I’ve had with George in the last several years.

Long before Cronulla and the Gulf spill, however, the politics of water, oil and culture have been on this Aussie artist’s mind before he conceived and designed the “Inshalla” surfboards some of which you see below.  Steeped for decades in research on migration patterns and desert cultures of Middle East and AsianPacific peoples, George foresaw that “water” and its shorelines would become the battlegrounds of the new Millennium.

When asked to comment on the suite in light of the current global response to the Gulf spill, George responded with this eye on the slide between the dynamic physics and metaphysics of culture artifacts:

The ‘Inshalla Surfboard” is a metaphysically iconic Australian work infused with a politically mediated encounter between “east” and “west.”  It is both a trans-national and trans-cultural work.

Each surfboard is inscribed with Sunni, Shia, Ottoman and Christian designs and imagery.  Here upon a platform for water sport, the designs mark the co-habitation of the Ozi, with people of Middle Eastern appearance but also of religious sects with each-other.  As art objects, the boards blur the distinctions between painting, photography, sculpture, digital technologies, sport and religion as to tactically and strategically critique the technical borders that separate disciplines, and in turn, critique the borders that divide cultures — all purposeful distinctions that maintain what seems like a permanent state of cultural confrontation, crisis and anxiety.

…Surfing is both transformative in its potential and meditative in its spiritual possibilities.  “In the surf we are all the same.”  The ocean is the great equalizer while at the shoreline that we reach the tactical border crossing between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the known local and the foreign/other/stranger, and between the secular and the fear of Islam.  The ‘Inshalla Surfboard” simultaneously represents the other to the other combining the Sufi with surfing and surfing with the sacred.  It explores the possibility of a space for all.

And the boards themselves? No doubt, they tease the human brain with the kind of visual delight that can only come from novel, sumptuous pattern recognition.  Look closely (if you ever get the chance to see them in the flesh!) and you’ll find they compel our ‘haptic” sense of intelligence, celebrating the “hand-made” gesture in an age of mass-production! Fellow researcher David McNeill comments:

These boards are most likely destined for art galleries or private collections; it is unlikely that the majority of them will ever be ridden.  Nevertheless, it is important to George that they could be. They are seven-foot “Thrusters” that have been crafted by Mark Rabbidge who is both a legendary surfer and a board shaper whose work is known and respected throughout the world. The difference between a great board and an ordinary one is measured in fractions of millimetres, and no one is better able to sense and shape these nuances than Rabbidge. George could have had his designs inscribed on mass produced blanks, but that was an option that he never considered. It is important to him that they have been forged by someone with a degree of skill and understanding for the discipline of board riding commensurate with the dedication shown by the craftspeople that manufactured the ceramics that serve as the visual sources for his transfers.

There you have it:  The Ocean is the great leveler in eco-political survival and in elegance.  Leave it to the surfrider and the itinerant artist to remind us that in the water, we are all just bodies in space.

For more info on Phil George’s art click here

To learn more about how the global, cross-cultural surfing community works to protect the ecology of our oceans and shorelines,

click here

To find out how you can contribute your 1 or more % effort to make a difference in ocean ecology, click here.