Library Street Collective is pleased to present a solo presentation by Detroit-based artist Scott Hocking at this year’s Untitled Art, Miami Special Projects (SP8). Hocking’s Water Works and Relics, both series created in and sourced from a former WWII-era marina in Detroit, form a layered response to water’s roles in shaping the physical landscapes and histories of labor, industry, and ecological transformation.

Through sculptural installations made entirely of maritime and industrial remnants collected onsite, Hocking maps the shifting relationship between humans and water, tracing a line between regional specificity and globally resonant concerns: extraction and repair, industrial decline, environmental stewardship, and the quiet choreography of nonhuman collaboration.

The Water Works are sculptures made during Hocking’s ongoing studio residency in a decommissioned marina along the Detroit River—part of the Great Loop, a continuous waterway connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Hocking has approached the marina as a kind of archaeological site, sourcing his materials directly from its grounds—rusted industrial offcuts, pigment-stained buckets, driftwood shaped by beavers. These castoff elements are reassembled into abstract forms that echo nautical infrastructure and ritual objects alike, whose materials hold the memory of water and the labor it once demanded.

Accompanying the Water Works is a selection of wall-based works from Hocking’s Relics series, also created with materials recovered from the marina. These works act as reliquaries for a site in flux—preserving fragments of place, material memory, and environmental change. Installed along the booth perimeter, the Relics enclose the Water Works sculptures, inviting viewers into an immersive, walkable installation, echoing the artist’s own embodied navigation of the marina site.

Hocking’s deep interest in cycles of transformation is mirrored in the material life of water itself: how it moves, erodes, binds, and reclaims. His process could be described as a kind of slow choreography with the elements, allowing chance, entropy, and time to act as collaborators. Within this presentation, and Hocking’s practice at large, water functions not just as a subject but as a co-author, its presence embedded in the very fabric of the sculptures.