Cartography of a Breach
Catalogue No. I · Whale Tail
A forty-tonne breach lasts seconds. The water closes, leaving no physical trace.
Description
Cartography of a Breach translates a transient event into a permanent topographic record. The monumental fluke serves as the physical territory of a crossing — the precise liminal moment where a body breaks the waterline.
The sculpted form acts as a constant plate, onto which a spectral lattice of contour lines is drawn once by hand. Borrowing 17th-century Dutch hydrographic notation, the chart records the form’s physical reaction to ocean against skin and weight against momentum. Each lattice is drawn in a single sitting and never repeated — the repeatable form is held against the unrepeatable surface, a system that produces uniques.
Infuses a deep, resonant calm into surrounding architecture. The massive form anchors the room, turning an explosive motion into a focal point of absolute stillness.
Specification
- Medium
- Hand-sculpted water-based acrylic resin
- Surface
- Mottled rust-ochre patina ground beneath hand-painted spectral contour lattice
- Notation
- 17th-century Dutch hydrographic cartography
- Dimensions
- 1220 × 750 × 300 mm (≈ 48 × 30 × 12 in)
- Edition
- Open series of uniques
- Status
- Catalogue No. I · Available for acquisition
Process — Drawing the Lattice
Hand-sculpting the breaching fluke master in clay — the constant plate.
Silicone negative taken; cast in water-based acrylic resin.
Mottled rust-ochre patina worked into the form.
Spectral contour lines drawn once by hand, in a single sitting.
Sealed and rigged for wall installation.
The form is the constant plate — the variable is the surface. Each lattice is drawn once by hand in a single sitting, and never repeated. Full process documentation is maintained in the studio archive.
Provenance
- Artist
- Ché Hough (Cape Town)
- Studio
- Cape Cache, Pearly Beach, Western Cape
- Field research
- 139,500 nautical miles at sea
- Execution
- 2026 — Pearly Beach Studio
- Authentication
- Certificate of Authenticity issued by Cape Cache
Related in This Typology
Kinetic Dolphin Tail
Graphite fluke wall relief — the same surface tension, rendered in monochrome.
View the work →
Kinetic Dolphin Dorsal
Sculpted dorsal fin — the moment a body breaks the surface, held in form.
View the work →
Apex Silhouette
Column sculpture — the apex predator stripped to essential structure.
View the work →Cartography of a Breach is an open series of uniques available for acquisition. Each iteration maps a new, unrepeatable cartography over the monumental form.
Acquisition Enquiries