TAMESIS

A SERIES OF ABSTRACT HAND-MADE CYANOTYPE IMAGES

I made this body of work in September 2023 as an emotional response to a particular place near my home on Bankside in London – a place I visit almost daily for solace, reflection, and inspiration. The Thames’ southern foreshore at low tide between Blackfriars Bridge and the Millennium Bridge is a self-contained world of glittering ripples, purling waves, seabirds’ cries, and the clatter and whoosh of pebbles, gravel, sand and jetsam restlessly pushed and pulled by the dark tidal waters. Each tide turns over fresh treasure from the 2,000 years of history layered beneath the foreshore, the elemental force of the water unearthing fragments and shards, washing them and re-presenting them, the past rising up to meet to the light of day.

I made all the pieces on the foreshore, using the elemental energy of sun to expose, and Thames water to fix shadowy half-remembered dreams onto paper. The work was exhibited as a single installation at the Photo Hastings exhibition The Mind’s Eye in October 2023

‘I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree…..the brown god is almost forgotten

By the dwellers in cities.

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated

By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting’

T S ELIOT