Flow Separation

Flow Separation was a commission by New York-based artist Tauba Auerbach, which transformed the historic Fireboat John J. Harvey into a contemporary “dazzle ship.” Throughout the summer and autumn of 2018, the dazzled fireboat was anchored at various docks around New York Harbor and offered free trips for the public, continuing John J. Harvey’s 18-year tradition since her retirement as a working fireboat.

The commission was one of five Dazzle Ship projects for which artists were invited to make a contemporary work inspired by the experimental camouflage painted on ships in WW1. The idea of ‘dazzle’, an experimental camouflage painted on to the surface of ships, was invented by British artist Norman Wilkinson, who prepared numerous designs for vessels, including US merchant ships, targeted by enemy U-boats. Drawing on avant-garde artistic movements such as Cubism and Vorticism, as well as animal camouflage, these bewildering shapes and angles were designed to confuse the enemy as they struggled to make out the dazzle ships against shifting waves and clouds.

For Auerbach’s contemporary design, the exterior of the fireboat was painted with two patterns that the artist generated through the intricate process of marbling paper. Treating this decorative art as a visualisation of the physics of “fluid dynamics,” Auerbach’s dazzle incorporates the movement and behaviour of water into its design. Maintaining the John J. Harvey’s red and white palette, Flow Separation foregrounds the history of dazzle’s emphasis on confusing the eye as opposed to hiding the vessel. The work was Auerbach’s first major public art commission.

About the artist
Tauba Auerbach (born 1981 in San Francisco, California) is a visual artist working across many disciplines including painting, artists’ books, photography, and sculpture. Her work “operat[es] in the gap between conceptual art, abstraction and graphic art”. She lives and works in New York.

Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and Public Art Fund, New York City’s leading presenter of dynamic outdoor art free of charge to the public

The Dazzle Ship series was co-commissioned with Liverpool Biennial