Saturation Point (2026)
A staged public leak, constructed from hand-sewn textiles, contained liquids, bound wire structures, and worn clothing. Drawing on everyday commutes to Blackburn station, the work positions water as something that resists control, exposing the persistent demand for containment, and the tensions this produces. Situated in the lineal space between infrastructure and the body, Saturation Point understands leakiness and softness as both material conditions and political states. The work traces how bodies and systems are shaped through processes of pressure, containment, and overflow, where failure to hold becomes both threat and possibility.
Influenced by Sara Ahmed’s writing in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, the project draws on the figure of the “soft” body as one imagined to be open, penetrable, and at risk. Ahmed’s analysis of the “soft touch” nation, constructed as overly receptive, feminised, and vulnerable to invasion, positions softness as a site where emotion, gender, and power converge. Within this framework, leakiness is a condition that exposes the instability of borders, between inside and outside, self and other, body and infrastructure. Saturation Point holds this tension, where the effort to contain becomes continuous, and where what escapes resists being fully governed.
Photo credit: Jack Bolton
Emily Tonge 