Alex Bag and Ethan Kramer, Le Cruel et Curieux Vie du la Salmonellapod, 2000; (video still); 11:48 min.

With artworks cutting across history and displayed in groups of abstract logic, Aquatopia could be described as a conceptual survey; it explores its theme from diverse historical angles and artistic perspectives. Here, the ocean is a filter, a site for interpretation, a toolbox of images and relations, and a stage for the sexual, spiritual, scientific, and narrative imagination. Firmly framed in the fantastic, artworks and objects are relieved of their descriptive duties and instead evidence their author’s fears, dreams, and wonderment. The brilliant antique copper diving helmet, the set of biological scientific etchings, the eighteenth-century map—each inspires new associations beyond their original purpose.

Contemporary works seem in their element. Located in a handsome video cluster, Le Cruel et Curieux Vie du la Salmonellapod (2000), by Alex Bag and Ethan Kramer, is a double riff on the nature documentary format and the fantastic violence of romance (in the dreamed-up world of the disgusting, hilariously chimeric Salmonellapod), playing this subjectivity to amazing ends. Ashley Bickerton’s nylon-equipped Orange Shark (2008) is perfectly fits the exhibition, as does Spartacus Chetwynd’s squidlike fabric construction. Shimabuku’s Then, I decided to give a tour of Tokyo to the octopus from Akashi (2000)—one of my favorite artworks in any circumstance—exactly captures Aquatopia’s double exposure of the ocean as both unfathomable phenomenon and site for personal experience. Nearby, Herbert James Draper’s A Water Baby (1895) leaps out of its circular frame, absurd and absolute in its sea-foam sentimentality.

Liz Craft, Old Maid, 2004. Bronze, 9 x 53 x 24 in.

While lacking a seeming sense of order—none of the works are grouped according to type, subject, medium, or arranged historically or by origin—Aquatopia’s construction feels highly considered. At first, the exhibition’s historical leaps caused me to fear that the curators had chosen to rely too heavily on spurious juxtaposition. I was scared that the exhibition would simply be a collection of Interesting Things (related to the ocean), much like Leckey’s The Universal Addressability and other scattered, perhaps too fashionable, contemporary modes of curating. To a certain degree, the curatorial choices reflect a similar gesture: many works included in Aquatopia were not meant to be exhibited in this manner—or at all—and part of the pleasure of examining works like the aforementioned copper diving helmet comes from examining it as art, placed as it is in a display context. However, the majority of works in Aquatopia are proper contemporary artworks, built as such, and those not in this category were chosen carefully and seemed to become more of themselves in the context of the exhibition. Often, the works appear arranged in unmarked clusters, patterning between contemporary and historical: in one room, Guy Ben-Nar’s homemade interpretation of Moby Dick (2000) plays a few meters from Gustave Dorés’s prints from Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1876); in another, the lapping waves from the Otolith Group’s quest for the undersea Drexciya, depicted in its film Hydra Decapita (2010), wash over the small huddled body of Liz Craft’s bronze Old Maid (2004), lit from above through emerald and azure gels.

JMW Turner. Sunrise with Sea Monsters, 1845; oil on canvas; 36 x 48 in. Courtesy Tate, London

Aquatopia is perhaps a perfect summer exhibition for a museum of the size and scale of Nottingham Contemporary. It offers as much to devoted followers of contemporary art as it does to children, as the exhibition’s content and breadth is rich territory for the museum’s educational directors. While it included a number of powerful and hard-edged works, Aquatopia remains one of the most enjoyable museum exhibitions I’ve attended. It is full of drowned wrecks, humor, and irony, and functioning almost like a postcard for the show, one of James Turner’s finest paintings, Sunrise with Sea Monsters (1845). An unfinished work, it was titled only by its interpreters, who discovered monsters in Turner’s waves.

Aquatopia is on view at Nottingham Contemporary, in London, through September 22, 2013.

Huang Yong Ping, Bat Project IV, 2005. Photo Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Courtesy Huang Yong Ping and Yu De Yao.

The diasporic artist, born and trained in China, has made Paris his home since 1989 when he was invited to take part in the highly influential (and slightly problematic) exhibition, ‘Magiciens de la terre’ at Centre Georges Pompidou. He is described either as a French artist or Chinese artist, depending on what institutional powers are in control, and it is clear in his work that he, too, struggles to negotiate his own identity. Hybridity defines both his life and work as he constructs fantastical creatures and architectural imaginings by combining loaded visual references from Western and Eastern mythologies, religions, and contemporary cultures.

‘Bat Project IV’ is a highly contentious piece that dominates the exhibition – it is the remnants and legacy of a former work that was subject to brash censorship in 2001 when it was pulled from the Fourth Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition and again in 2002 when it was banned from the Guangzhou Triennial. The disputed claims and basis of the decisions to forcefully withdraw the work was a wholly political and highly unreasonable matter, much like the incident that spawned its inception.

Huang Yong Ping, Bat Project IV, 2005. Image courtesy of the Artist and Nottingham Contemporary.

In 2001 Huang Yong Ping set out to reconstruct segments of an American spy plane that crashed into a Chinese fighter jet. In the aftermath of the incident, the plane carrying sensitive information was grounded in China and an international relations struggle ensued. Eventually the plane was allowed to return to American soil – however only by being decapitated, dismantled and shipped back dishonourably in pieces.

‘Bat Project IV’ holds the traces of this story – an archive of material relating to the incident, its aftermath and the fate of Huang Yong Ping’s project. The hundreds of bats that inhabit the space symbolise a psychological divide between the East and West. Bats represent happiness and good fortune in Eastern mythology, and are considered a dark, rabid creature of the night in Western culture, the latter made quite clear in the shuddering response of the local audience to the preserved flock. One wonders how the reaction would differ if the work had been shown in Shenzhen.

Huang Yong Ping, Marché de Punya (The Market of Merits and Virtues), 2007. Image courtesy of the Artist and Nottingham Contemporary.

The strength of Huang Yong Ping’s work lies in the animals – they provide a point of entry and are the key to his poetic metaphors. Taxidermied creatures that exist between species, cultures and meanings, they can only be understood subjectively; admittedly with my knowledge, dominated by western culture and ideas, many of the subtle references escape me…

Huang Yong Ping, Marché de Punya (The Market of Merits and Virtues), 2007. Image courtesy of the Artist and Nottingham Contemporary.

In the installation ‘Marché de Punya (The Market of Merits and Virtues)’ an elephant lies dead in front of a typical street shop market stall selling traditional Chinese carvings and banal household items – this symbol of wisdom and strength is overtaken by excessive economic expansion and forces of globalisation, the plasticisation of the western world defeating a power of nature.

While I may not relate to the cultural references present in many of the works, I quite knowingly grasp onto the concept of displacement and struggles with identity as a foreigner living in a place that is not my natal home. While the cultural divide between England and its colony is not nearly as drastic, and the language spoken (mostly) the same, there will always be differences, and a process of assimilating the divide. Since moving abroad my awareness of Canadian identity has become heightened; particularly in relation to the neighbours in the South – a complex arisen from the deluge of inquiries that come from American friends and the vast amount of cultural differences we have surprisingly found. Interestingly enough, it is this relation that Huang Yong Ping alludes to in the work ‘Amerigo Vespucci.’

Huang Yong Ping, Amerigo Vespucci, 2003. Image courtesy of the Artist and Nottingham Contemporary.

As an Italian bulldog, titled after the gentleman who arguably discovered America, urinates on the wall, the puddle that collects on the floor resembling the American landmass. The line of demarcation between the floor and the wall signifies the border between the United States and Canada, whose fluidity Huang Yong Ping sees as implying ‘extensiveness and overflowingness;’ an example of all limits and borders as one drips into the other. It is this border that I relate to, the hardening of its fluidity in the past decade something I have experienced – a landmass seemingly becoming more and more divided as its borders are reinforced.

So what comes of all of this and where does it leave us? With political plays of power using citizens as pawns. Cross-cultural struggles for identity in a post-globalised world. Controversy and censorship at the forefront of the arts. Heady? Yes, and fitting indeed.