Engaging in rivers

LIVELY OBJECTS 2 - Sat 27th April AT PARADISE WORKS - cLICK ON THE ABOVE IMAGE TO REGISTER.

Based at Paradise Works, this session is a continuation from ‘Lively Objects #1’, which explored the agency of water along the River Irwell and engaging in possibilities of the river as a ‘hyper object’. As well as exploring industrial and agricultural history through the peat restoration site at Little Woolden Moss and a short tour of Anna Clough’s and Nicole Sheppard’s exhibition, ‘Muck & the Mire’.

In this session we will further these discussions, developing our creative ideas through engagement with the River Irwell as a physical river and time-capsule containing heritage. We will continue to playfully explore local and global relationships to bodies of water using artistic interventions. Followed by an informal discussion with Alex Critecherly of Lancashire Wildlife trust, diving into the history of Peat extraction and its restoration. We will explore the site specific history of Little Woolden Moss; as a railway and peat extraction site. Throughout the afternoon we will engage in a collaborative mapping exercise, using found objects as a method of mark making. This process will follow our physical journeys around the river Irwell and in the RHS Bridgewater Community Gardens.

Please note this is a free ticketed event, dress warm. You do not have to have attained the first workshop to attend.

There will be a shared lunch, please bring your own forks and a contribution.

There is a kitchenette and toilet at the facility.

When: Saturday the 27 of April 11am - 2pm

Where: Ground Floor Gallery, Paradise Works, E Philip St, Salford M3 7LE

Lively Objects 1 - Saturday 6th April

Based at Paradise Works, within this session we will explore the agency of water along the River Irwell; leading from Salford into Irlam where Little Woolden Moss tributaries seep into it. We will look at the river as a ‘hyperobject’, learning how different sections of the river have different values, exploring Salford’s industrial heritage through waste left within the river and Little Woolden Moss peat land renovation through plants found within the wetland.

We will start with an informative talk on the heritage and ecology of sections of the river. Afterwards, we will physically and visually explore the sites through a ‘bog in a box’ and a walk along a stretch of the Irwell outside Paradise Works, collecting found objects and sketching.

Reflecting on what we have learnt, we will enter the practical side of the session, participating in a playful phenomenological intervention led by Fiona Brehony that invites us to explore relationships to waterways using creative writing exercises. The force and vibrancy of the River Irwell (as physical river and time-capsule containing heritage) is a great opportunity to use embodied approaches to understand the scale of the river. ‘Phenomenology’ here refers to the engagement of phenomena (the river) as directly experienced.

We will playfully engage in possibilities of being and being with the river; connecting personal objects used to serve a tangible human experience, with seemingly intangible ‘hyperobjects’. The hyperobject is complex and challenging to grasp since it is of huge magnitude. The term refers to things that are hugely spread out through space and time relative to our human scale. 'Hyperobject' could be used to refer to black holes and the Solar System; it could also refer to all the nuclear material on Earth, the plastic in the ocean, all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or global heating. Hyperobjects are real entities whose full reality is ungraspable by humans; the more we know of ‘hyperobjects’, the less we understand. The philosopher Timothy Morton, who coined the term, refers to them as ‘strange strangers’, whose monumental scale makes them seem like an illusion. Here, we will playfully try to connect with the hyperobject under the notion that ‘everything is connected’, asking – how do the objects we use in our daily lives impact the larger world around us?

The session will finish with a sculptural workshop led by Anna Clough and Nicole Sheppard. Working collaboratively as a group, and encouraging conversation, we will create a landscape based in clay. This will hold the found objects which have been collected on the day outside Paradise Works and brought from Little Woolden Moss by Anna and NIcole. This part of the session will ask us to imagine how animals may live within both environments. We’ll think about vessels and mounds and how water affects them, exploring them through shape, depth, texture and height.

Please bring an object from your home, and food for a shared lunch.

If you have any access requirements, please let us know and we'll do our best to accommodate them.

SOUND DIARIES - THURS 30TH & FRI 31ST MAY - OXFORD BROOKES UNI - CLICK LINK IN IMAGE.

A comparative study of sounds from outside the River Thurne and the River Irk.

My initial response to the Sound Diaries Open Call was to make three soundscapes that accompany images and pieces of poetic text relevant to three sections of the River Thurne.

I am in the early stages of a PhD research project – engaging in possibilities of rivers (with a focus on River Irk) as Intangible Heritage; collecting sounds, images and text and exploring relationships to the river, past and present. This research is within a Geography department, and I felt it essential that I maintain a strong relationship to the foundations of my artistic practice. That is, with playful engagement to places I am working with.

In Geography, the term ‘sound’ refers to a smaller body of water usually connected to a sea or an ocean (Geographical Sound). There are only three geographic sounds in the UK and only one connected to a river (Heigham Sound which connects to the River Thurne via Candle Dyke). This was an entirely new concept to me and one I wanted to engage with in a playful and poetic way.

I believed that working with River Thurne on a sound diaries project would allow me to playfully engage in a different location and would enrich a later stage of my research with the River Irk. However, as my research progresses, I realise I am approaching the River Irk in very much the same way I will approach River Thurne. With this, I began to compare sounds and ecologies of these rivers. While the Thurne is a stretch of river giving access to Hickling Broad and Horsey Mere as well as flowing through Martham Broad, the Irk flows through the historic county of Lancashire and ends below Victoria Railway Station in the centre of Manchester. The idea of the Thurne being of an eco-system that eventually flows out to sea, while the Irk comes to a holt below Victoria Railway Station began to fascinate me.

Being in Manchester, I experience a lot of rain and now when I experience rain, I think about rivers. I think of the downpour reaching a mountain, a spring emerging from the ground moving downstream. Merging into another stream. I think of the body of a river. Of rivers leading to estuaries out to sea softly waving into expansive home. Of sun softly heating sea water; evaporation and clouds forming. I think of this cycle and what happens when a river is stunted by blocks, buildings and waste. What happens when a river is culverted? What happens to the life of a river and how does this impact sound outside of these spaces?

PRESENTING RIVER RESEARCH - FrI 14TH JUNE - UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD - CLICK LINK IN IMAGE.

June is set to be a busy month - I will be participating in a listening residency, delivering a 20-minute presentation of research (+ 20 minutes for audience questions), and submitting approximately 10,000 words as part of an upgrade onto Year 2 of my PhD research. With writing this now in March, I feel it’s good to reflect on the importance of staying present and focusing on the task at hand. To enjoy the experience of developing ideas and writings that are beginning to take shape having spent time with texts and works of others. PhD research is all about standing on the shoulders of those who came before / making friends with fellow travellers and finding a comfortable, slightly unique and relevant seat at their table. I find it exciting to imagine writers (no longer with us in person) very much alive in the books they have written.