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Regardless of whether 3 or 100m deep; sandy or stony; wild or manicured; beside a noisy road or remote, the beach conjures up an imaginary space which, as a liminal encounter of nature and culture, orients our vision in, and view of, the world. Furthermore, how and where we position ourselves in and along the no-man' s-land strip reflects the degree of our immersion in the natural and cultural, and thus explains why the beach has a peculiar place in our imagination and visuality. We look out from the beach onto a broader, open vacant space; a space wherein nature is realised as the distant, the untamable, the ineffable. Horizon on the one hand and vertical height on the other represent the volume of space at the beach in tension with the grains of sand structuring its overall form. Within these differential scales and proportions, the rhythmic flood and ebb of water, the clearly visible times of day and seasonal periods extend the dimension of time into a spatial form. Taking Victor Shklovsky's notion of defamiliarisation as our point of departure we explore how these spatial and temporal aspects of the beach can be metaphorically understood as paralleling the condition of art. For this state of knowing nothing, characterized by defamiliarisation and feeling is the initial vessel in which new thoughts and images are free to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the illusionary training of the senses, the beach will always remain the line of tension which confronts the orchestrated order of the horizon and the audible imminence of chaos. Consequently, it is our goal to enlighten how the beach can be conceptualized as threshold, as a result of the correlation between its atmosphere and its material. Noronha da Costa emerges here as the secret expression of the beach and its auratic effect, revealing through his paintings the narrative dimension of the seashore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the issue is presented which discusses the trope of the beach in art and several articles within the issue on the relationship between the beach, art, and artists.

This article examines tropes such as exoticism and heterotopia in relation to the beach. Discussing these issues from a practitioner's perspective and with reference to his own work, the author explores the extent to which the beach might offer a way of rethinking boundaries and categories. His paintings deal with the beach as exotic space and with how issues such as alterity and Otherness manifest themselves in the gaze of the beholder. The article explores the ambiguity of the site of the beach and how this is reflected in a variety of contexts. These often contradictory meanings, worked through in his paintings, reflect not only on the diverse interpretations of the beach, but also on the characteristic ability of the beach to unite opposed elements. Finally, the article investigates the possibility of creating by destroying as an intrinsic aspect of the beach. In the analysis of his paintings and aspects of the beach in relation to its ephemeral character of creation and destruction, this article shows how categories such as creation/destruction can be problematised. The article seeks to propose the beach as a model for a new understanding of this apparently contradictory visual economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jane Darke, artist and filmmaker, lives on a beach. She collects and records debris that wash in. She also paints them, letting thus chance influence her work. She also paints the beach, a 'pale world' she insists, defined by 'transience' and 'interconnectedness'. She writes and makes films about the beach and understands her work as 'celebration', seeking a balance between the subject of the work and her own meaning-creating emphasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]