The images stick with you long after you leave the exhibit:

• Floating mermaids and jellyfish projected on screens around you;

• Realistic seascape sculptures made of polyurethane;

• Brightly colored billboard painting with surreal scenes from Egypt;

• Empty water bottles lined up in a row.

In “Water, Water Everywhere ...” at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the theme is simple, but the ideas behind the artwork are complex, says SMoCA senior curator Marilu Knode.

The pieces deal with overpopulation, ecology, spirituality, history, limited water resources and the conflict between changing cultures.

Take the 13-minute video installation by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba of Vietnam. The piece shows Vietnamese men attempting to push and pull bicycle carts underwater. Not wearing breathing tanks or hoses, the cart drivers must continually surface to gulp air, complicating the task.

“He's really dealing with a Vietnam that's caught between the riptide of history moving into the 21st century, but also the weight of Vietnam's very rich traditions,” Knode says.

Knode first saw the installation four years ago in a Tokyo gallery. It sparked the idea for a show in which all of the exhibits used water as a medium to explore greater topics.

The idea has gone from clippings and contact names in boxes to Knode's first curated show at SMoCA since she started in January 2004.

“Whenever I travel, I'm looking not just at the work that I'm there to see, but other work (too). ... Even if it's not an artist I can work with immediately, images can stick with you over a period of time,” Knode says.

The show has two pieces by Robert Gober, whose minimalist sculptures use drains, pipes, sinks and references to water as a method of purification and ritual cleansing. An untitled drain cast in pewter is installed in a lone wall; in another area, a stark piece of barnacle-covered driftwood, cast in bronze, leans against a wall by itself.

In Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander's “Love Lettering, 2002,” goldfish swim past each other, wearing single words attached to tiny pieces of paper on their tails.

Artist Song Dong of China created his work, “Floating: Scottsdale, 2005,” by circling the city's perimeters, filming areas where growth is springing up, then continued along the city's canals and included film of himself splashing in the water.

The work is “all about reflecting the city of Scottsdale on the water,” he says through a translator, suggesting growth may eventually outpace the supply of water.

“To me, water and the use of video are just mediums of culture,” he says.

‘Water, Water Everywhere ...’
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (until 8 p.m. Thursday), noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Through Sept. 4.
Where: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 7374 E. Second St.
Cost: $7 adults, $5 students, free for children
Information: or www.smoca.org