Wetted Width derives from Biggs’s 2014 exhibition with Kirsten Lilford entitled ‘Distance’. In that body of work, Biggs was fascinated with imagining the experiences of geologists ‘out in the field’, quantifying nature. There is an inherent tension between the aesthetic notions of the sublime and the beautiful: Biggs’s hat-wearing researchers are dwarfed by the grandeur of the natural world (sublime) while attempting to contain it within the bounds of scientific systems of measurement and classification (which speaks to the beautiful’s notions of balance and ideals). While the solitary figures go about their task with a charming sense of purpose, Biggs’s masterful handling of paint asserts the perpetual elusiveness of their surroundings.