SHANSHAN JIANG
Threshold Index: Glasgow Urban Water Interfaces
— Reading the Surface Evidence of Glasgow’s Hidden Water Systems through Contemporary Ink Painting
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A site-responsive ink project exploring waterlines, stains, sediment, damp marks and repaired surfaces as evidence of Glasgow’s hidden water systems.
Threshold Index: Glasgow Urban Water Interfaces is a contemporary ink painting project that reads Glasgow’s overlooked surface marks as evidence of hidden water systems. Waterlines on canal walls, stains beneath bridges, sediment at drainage edges, damp marks and patched concrete are often treated as ordinary wear or maintenance residue. This project asks what happens when these marks are read as traces of managed and unmanaged water.
Through field observation, ink painting, paper-based experimentation and Floating Surface Translation, I investigate how water, infrastructure, repair and weather shape the surfaces of the city. Rather than representing water as landscape, the project treats water as a condition of image-making: something that enters paper, changes surfaces and reshapes the language of ink painting.
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How can contemporary ink painting make the surface evidence of Glasgow’s hidden water systems legible and discussable, and how might these traces reshape the language of ink painting itself?
The field archive is built through repeated visits to selected Glasgow water-interface sites. I record waterlines, seepage, sediment, repair, obstruction, residue, flow pressure and surface contact through photography, drawing, field notes and non-invasive observation.
Recurring site clusters include:
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Clyde Tidal Weir and Glasgow Green
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Broomielaw and central River Clyde edges
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Speirs Wharf and Port Dundas, Forth & Clyde Canal
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River Kelvin around Kelvingrove Park and Kelvin Walkway
Floating Surface Translation is a field-based ink method developed through my water-interface research. It uses a temporary floating working surface where paper, water, ink, gesture, ripples, pressure and observation meet on site. The method places image-making within the tension between moving water and fixed infrastructure. Water is not only observed; it becomes an unstable transfer surface that affects timing, contact, pressure and mark-making.
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The method is developed as a non-invasive and contained process. No ink, pigment, paper or other material is released into public water.