The Undersea World and Other Stories investigates Simon Patterson’s consistent explorations of the sea, stars and time – themes central to the collections and research at the National Maritime Museum (NMM). The Museum unpacks the material cultures that result from human attempts to find their place in the world, be it mapping the skies above, the ocean depths below, or seeking relationships across time and space. Such structures form frameworks of understanding that are bounded by limits of knowledge and distributed through language. Patterson’s artistic practice uses wry humour to question the ways language is used and misused in a flawed network of knowledge, power, doubt and affirmation. Language is built on consensus, yet in Patterson’s hands the register shifts to one of dissensus as he negotiates between universal solutions and failures that are, paradoxically, essential for language to do its work.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/2407