Diana Baker Smith
2026
Two-channel Super 8 film transferred to digital video
8:30 minutes

Trace a Piece of Water follows the movement and rhythms of two port cities: Cork Harbour in Ireland and Sydney Harbour in Australia. Filmed on Super 8, the work brings the surfaces of these two waterways into relation, tracing their connections through histories of migration and colonisation.

The work takes its title from William Bradley, First Lieutenant aboard HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet. In a journal entry from 1789, he wrote that Governor Phillip had gone to “trace a piece of water”, hoping to find a river running between Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay. The phrase, repeated throughout Bradley’s record of the early colony, underscores the central role of water within the British Empire, with navigable waters forming a critical link between the Imperial centre and its ever-expanding peripheries.

Using Bradley’s writing as an instruction, Trace a Piece of Water brings attention to water as both a surface and a medium through which colonial power operated. Filmed on Super 8 while walking along the shorelines of Sydney and Cork Harbours, the work follows a simple score: one walk, one roll of film, its duration determined by the length of the reel. The score was repeated along Sydney Harbour during a year-long residency at Vaucluse House, and Cork Harbour during a residency at Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh. The work considers these two key ports within Britain’s maritime empire, their harbours enabling the movement of people, labour and capital on which its expansion depended. Cork has a particular relationship to Sydney, as a port through which generations of Irish convicts and immigrants left for Australia, including the artist’s own ancestors.

Across two channels, footage from the two harbours repeats and falls in and out of sync, allowing their surfaces to converge and separate. The material interruptions of Super 8 become part of this shifting rhythm, bringing the distant waterways into relation.

Work Credits
Colourist: Justin Tran
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Trace a Piece of Water has been commissioned by Mosman Art Gallery. It was developed through the Vaucluse House Creative and Cultural Residency Program with Museums of History NSW, and a residency at SIRIUS Arts Centre, Cobh. Research undertaken in Ireland was supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Diana Baker Smith, Trace a Piece of Water, 2026. Super 8 film transferred to digital video, production still. Photograph: Lucy Parakhina