Suspended in the midnight waters of the Weeki Wachee River on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Michael Dweck’s titular ‘mermaid’ represents a connection to the past, and honours a long lineage of ‘river children’. Once underwater – where she can hold her breath for many minutes – her isolated glide into blackness is an absolute escape.

In Sculptural Forms, Dweck transforms this fluidity into photographic sculptures. He first prints his alluring mermaid with pigments on silk, places it on hand-shaped polyurethane foam then hand-coats it with fibreglass and layers of high-gloss resin. The resulting surfboard-shaped sculpture seamlessly merges the subject and medium. Inspired by the Finish Fetish artists in 1960s LA, who used plastics and synthetic resins – materials used for surfboards and customised cars – in their art, Dweck comments, ‘This smooth fluid form becomes a vehicle that transports you to another place.’

Michael Dweck is an American visual artist and filmmaker best known for a series of narrative photographic projects that explore on-going struggles between identity and adaptation in endangered societal enclaves. Monographs include The End: Montauk, NY (2004), Mermaids (2008), and Habana Libre (2011). His current project, Blunderbust, explores all angles of a small-stakes Long Island racetrack via an ambitious mélange of photography, sculpture, installation, abstract painting, and a feature-length documentary.