We have lost our home to flooding three times and since knocking our house down and rebuilding it on stilts, our village has flooded again in January 2024. My work is about my love/hate relationship with open water. And the fragility of our climate.
”The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” Robert Swan – Explorer.
My practice is illustrated with the layering of organic and found materials from the river, and the open waters edge, evoking the natural ebb and flow of the water to illustrate the unpredictability and the emotional weight it is carrying. Through marks and silhouettes, I try to tell my story, one that is made up of beauty and unease, revealing the hidden depths of what the water holds beneath its surface. These traces speak of personal memory as well as the larger ecological narrative.
The work becomes a reflection on the fragility of our ecosystems and on a wider scale, the whole of our environmental and global climate crisis. Our rivers and waterways are vulnerable to pollution, drought and flooding, all of which continue to accelerate the impact of climate change.
July 2025.
The materials collected are shaped by time, weather and place. It is extremely warm at the moment, (9th July 2025), and what I have collected this morning is already dried and shriveled.
My next collection from the open water came as a surprise. The water is extremely still and I was able to collect some swan feathers from the surface while I was swimming. They are quite long, probably about 40 cm.
Using the found objects and collaborating with the open water, the work is a reflection on the quiet interaction between human and environment. These next set of cyanotypes capture textures, colours and rhythms of our living ecosystem.
These were a two stage process, the first exposing them to the sunlight with the just the found objects.
The results were unusually grey.
The second was adding the river water to mix with the found objects.
And the last, washing them through in the river water.
Using these natural stamps and making eco conscious organic abstract marks, while telling a story about the environment, time, place and materiality. Exploring the intersections of nature, using the open collected water and creating these ephemeral impressions, with a delicate balance between our natural world and the human presence. Creating gestures of imprints and the motions of water, the imperfections created by fluid unpredictability, embracing chance and allowing all the mediums to guide the outcome.
Reflection
My work is about my complicated relationship with water, a love/hate relationship that underpins my practice. Robert Swan’s words resonate deeply with me, the responsibility always seem to be for someone else, even though we all see the fragility of our climate far to often.
Floodwater carries away many memories, possessions and to some extent a sense of safety. I have a profound respect for the natural world, for its power, beauty and unpredictability.
Through my work, I try to tell a narrative that is personal as well as ecological, a story of what lies beneath the waters surface, hidden in the depths of fragility and resilience.
Everywhere that I collect found objects is threatened by pollution, drought and flooding, the pieces being shaped by the time and weather.
The quiet unexpected discoveries while swimming in the open water remind me how we are all interconnected with the environment.
The cyanotypes in this set were a two stage process, firstly exposing to the sunlight and secondly washing them through the river water. These gestures of imprint embrace chance and let the environment guide the out come. Through this process, not only am I creating the art but documenting the fragile balance between human presence and nature, detail of displacement and adaptation speaking out towards the larger narrative of our changing climate.
Pieces that hold beauty and unease, ephemeral impressions that echo impermanence of both water and memory.
Open water swimming.
Viv King. Level 3. BA Fine Art 