Come along tonight 6th December 6-8 and meet the artists
The work entitled Bedload part 1 and 2 started in the summer when the A20 was blocked and instead of heading off to Kent, my daughter and I diverted to Southend, for a summer’s day at the beach. While we were there she did what she has often done and filled a container with sand from the beach and asked if we could keep it. This got us thinking about what it might contain, the sand, (probably brought in by the Council) would contain all sorts of tiny deposits from the river. The river Thames which originates across the country in the West. Not only the literal physical deposits, but also all the thoughts and feelings of the people who had used it in the time it took to reach the sea. All the trade, the pleasure, the tears, all the thoughts; thought as people stood on all the bridges that cross the river, as they played in boats, as they worked on, in and by the river; all the stories lost into the Thames.
That was when we started to think about collecting bedload from the full length of the river, and Mimi thought of the title. In my mind was the reflection of increased complexity as the river matures, the way in which the river primarily collects material in its early stages and deposits more as it moves on down. We relflected this in the process of collecting material: Mimi collected, I carried and deposited it into the work, which we discussed and collaborated in creating.
In addition to this we thought of the way in which the river embodies place at its different stages, so that at its source it crosses fields, adding to the lushness of the grass when wet and reducing it when the bed is dry as it was when we were there.
It intertwines with agriculture, and less than a mile in has a manmade damn of some kind and very quickly a bridge, but when we were there in October no real river. The interplay between it and the natural world is evident in the eroded wood we found in its dry bed which became part of Bedload part 2.
The river already embodied the balance found along its full length, between economic: As an agricultural resource, and leisure : As a spot for people taking a country walk.
The stories the river holds are of itself here at the start are alternately full and dry. A source which is sometimes no source at all… And the questions it seemed to ask at this stage are: Is Thames Head really true to its name? And while dominantly natural is there any wildness here? Is our longest river tame from the start?
Our next collection point was Oxford: Here there was a mix of wet and dry, the river was full of boats, many of which were full of students, and the water meadows were dry and full of cattle. There was a sense here that collecting the bedload was both a riskier and probably a dirtier job. The
river had recently been dredged so that where it was flowing it rapidly became quite deep. We took a sample from the side of the river. We also picked one up from the dry bed of the stream that runs through the water meadows, this however runs under the city and emerges from a pipe with a distinctly sewer like appearance which is rather disconcerting, and made hand washing a priority.
Where the river runs through Oxford it serves the city with its complicated population divide, the students who are temporary residents and the long term residents many of whom work at the University and many of whom do not. A city bounded in an ancient history, and yet by its nature in a state of constant flux. A city caught up in traditions and at the same time holding some of the most cutting edge research and thinking in the world. A city both essentially British and eminently international. And these complex parts of the identity of modern Britain are played out as the river cuts through the country from West to East along the rest of its route. And here is where the metaphor of the Thames as a Lethe starts to hold true for me. Once the population of the river become dense and complex, and the arguments about identity start to arise. Because here is the question that arises here. What is the identity of Britain? Is it not the case that it is all of these things, international and national? parochial and ground breaking? Traditional, conservative and innovative and liberal? Silly and serious? If you took the stories of any one Oxford bridge running across the river on one day would they not contain all of these things? If you only see one side of this at any time you are forgetting the other.
So once we reached London and the deposits contained so much more in the
way of industrial products and manufactured bits and pieces, where the river was in the process of collecting and depositting at the same time, the way in which the river holds our stories spitting out fractions of stories had caught our imagination.
This is the background and process that we went through in creating Bedlam 1 and Bedlam 2: Thames’ Empty Bed which will be showing in The Thames: The ARTery of London, at Devon House, St Katharine Docks between 4 and 18 December. I will be there
The river Thames runs across the country, collecting evidence in its bedload of all that it has been through, both physically, in time, and metaphorically. Collecting from here and depositing there in fragments, like a giant Lethe. These works explore the metaphor of the Thames as a Lethe, holding all the lost stories of London, the thoughts that have disolved as people stand on the bridges, the physical deposits of its ancient history, the evidence it holds of both human endeavors and disappointments. And in particular we have a fascination with the way a river matures along its route, collecting most in its early stages and depositing most in its meandering maturity.
In the painting “Fulham Lethe”, the Thames holds all our lost dreams, and I have created the space to consider those dreams.
Sarah Needham
Bedload Part1
The piece “ Bedload” is a participatory project which I started with my daughter, she is 12, just emerging from childhood. She took the role of collector of information, I of recorder, depositor. We have visited the Thames from Thames Head to Southend and collected samples of the bedload which are seen here in testubes. We have wondered about what they might contain, what evidence of geology, of stories, of histories, new ideas and dreams in the different locations and how these change as the river matures.
This work invites participation, with small containers for the viewer to take away, tiny messages in bottles and respond to the piece with their own collection from the bedload. It is the starting point for a project that will continue online through my blog. artfromlondonmarkets.blogspot.com :Thames Project
Bedload Part 2
“Thames’ Empty Bed”:
Larger deposits collected from the Thames, evidence of the Thames starting point in nature, through the very human geography of London and the maturation point at the sea where nature and humanmade struggle for dominance. While collecting these items we came across what looked like a human shoulder blade(not collected), hoped it was in fact animal but it made us think about how ambiguous the evidence we were collecting was. Ambiguity less present in Tracey Emin’s more famous bed.
