In June 2022 I was asked by the Burton Art Gallery to explore the idea of water quality in a series of ceramic pieces as part of the Environmental commission the gallery sponsors every year. My response to was to use the River Torridge as a basis for water sampling with the idea of taking samples at different points in the river. The aim being to analyse the samples and create some form of glaze material or addition to tell a story of the journey of the water from the source to the mouth.
This project is ongoing and happening over at least 2 years. The story will develop over time and starts as a short-term project , which in many ways, aims to explore the feasability of the idea of sampling water and making some kind of data from it which can be made into a glaze.
My aim is to try to walk or access as much of the river Torridge as I can and learn about the geology, the landscape, the Flora and Fauna that lives in and around it. In that journey and the learning I will be doing I hope to find ways to express some of that in new work that incorporates not only the water data, but also some of the other discoveries I find out about along the way.
Many thanks to the Burton Art Gallery for commissioning me to do this and to those who have helped me learn about the Torridge and enabled access to the river.
I have been keeping a sketchbook / journal of the activity in this project which I have transcribed as a series of blog posts, which you can find here.
