”The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” Robert Swan – Explorer.
Following on from my tutorial, and honing in and tightening up my subject matter, as well as including inspirational and supporting artists. Mark Dion The Thames Dig, Roni Horn, and Jason deCaires Taylor’s ‘The Rising Tide’, focusing on artists who are connected to and have collaborated in some way with the River Thames.
The river represents life, flow, change as well as connections, by creating art using these elements, is an unharmful way to draw attention to the fragility of our water ecosystems.
Using the river as the central element for my practice and research, exploring the themes of ecological balance, pollution and our human relationships with nature. Using the water as well as the sediment, silt and found objects to collaborate with and make the art.
Mark Dion – The Thames Dig
Known for his explorations of natural history, The Thames Dig was commissioned by the Tate in 1999. An archaeological dig as well as an environmental inquiry. The Thames Dig became a community project as Dion invited the public to help with sifting through the silt on the banks of the River Thames at low tide. Objects ranging from coins, animal bones, pottery and children’s toys were cleaned an organised into broad categories.
©Mark Dion, Tate Thames Dig: Mark Dion and Collaborators with Cleaned and Classified Artifacts, South Lawn of the Tate at Millbank, 1999, photograph. Digital image courtesy of Mark Dion (all rights reserved).
This fascinating installation illustrated the human interaction with the river, including both pollution and natural elements and waste. I love the order and chaos of the found objects, what has been discarded and then the order that they were curated behind glass doors in the cabinet.
Much like what I am trying to achieve the river becomes both the subject and the collaborator.
Roni Horn
“Water is a form of perpetual relation, not so much a substance but a thing whose identity is based on its relation to other things. Most of what you’re looking at when you look at water is light reflection”.
© Roni Horn – Still Water (The River Thames for example) 1999
https://www.hauserwirth.com/news/13971-roni-horn-saying-water/
Horn’s powerful 40 minute monologue has so many true words for me surrounding water.
A soft entrance for not being, children fear what they can’t see, at night the darkness of the water reflects the darkness of the sky. Horn talks about suicide and the the comforting feeling that you will no longer be visible. There isn’t really a colour only dark and fluid making things disappear.
Filth, horror of what is in there, human waste, pollution, blackness. Tranquil, dark and fluid, cruel, deep, cold, unsettled.
Soft and hard.
Fresh and fowl.
As Horn reads the monologue, she starts in daylight and goes through sunset to the evening, ending in darkness. It’s perfectly timed.
More notes: Living with a flooding river. Art, water and resilience. The politics of flooding and everyday life. Where the river breaks both it’s banks and the human spirit. The river as a collaborator, making art from within the flood plain. Art from the rivers edge.
References
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dion-tate-thames-dig-t07669/digging-thames-mark-dion
Accessed 16th May 2025
Accessed 16th May 2025
http://collectionofcollections.mx/en/mark-dion-archaeology-tate-thames-dig/
Accessed 16th May 2025
https://www.hauserwirth.com/news/13971-roni-horn-saying-water/
Accessed 17th May 2025
https://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/roni-horn-aka-roni-horn
Accessed 17th May 2025
Viv King. Level 3. BA Fine Art 