Charles Lim’s artistic practice develops from an engagement with the complex histories and shifting geographies of the sea, and the ways in which we navigate them. Informed by field research, Lim’s maritime excursions interrogate familiar perceptions and accepted accounts, revealing the sea as less a pristine natural environment and more a territory shaped by culture, commerce and politics.

A project begun in 2016, Stealing the Trapeze charts the contested history of a key instrument used in competitive sailing around the world: the trapeze. Through photomedia, sculpture, archival research and found objects, the artist suggests how British and New Zealand yachtsmen, exposed to South-East Asian boat design during the British Empire’s colonial period, appropriated the trapeze from traditional Malay racing canoes and claimed it as their own invention.