Artists Ruby Jean Waterhouse and Cleo Milly Nelson have come together for Sluice Biennial to produce We Are Bodies Apart, a multimedia exploration into how we can communicate with, and through water.
Using research and intuitive methods, two separate portraits of different bodies of water have been produced. Both artists are from Leeds and subsequently moved to London at the same time; where Waterhouse resides back in Leeds, Nelson remains in London. Waterhouse chose Regents Park lake in London as a place of exploration due to her frequent walks there and Nelson chose Gledhow Beck in Leeds due to its proximity to her family home.
Collaborating whilst working at a physical distance from each other, Waterhouse and Nelson use the other as a conduit to continue a connection to their chosen significant body of water. The artists find a way of communicating with the water that they are physically separated from, as well as a new site that they must engage with through the others' footsteps, instructions having been sent to advise how to move in the space. With this, the artists engage with a place of personal significance through only their own memory, and more importantly, the eyes of another, as well as a new place through an instructional and intuitive approach.
The collected ephemera from this exploration- text, drawing, sculpture, print and digital media is a result of allowing another person to act as a guide to these bodies of water. Documentation of a performance is displayed alongside this; performed remotely from one another, the artists visited their chosen sites on the 18th May to collect a small sample of water. Along with this sample, they also collected some objects from the banks of the water. These collections were then sent to each other, and on the 1st of June the water was redeposited, into the other site*.
With this action of exchange, the separate bodies of water are now forever linked, forging a cycle of enduring communication between them and the artists.
*Samples were consciously miniscule so as not to affect the different ecosystems, with consideration of both being freshwater sites, with similar properties.
“Collaborating with Cleo while being at a physical distance from each other was hard, however it enabled us to create an interesting project that highlights the emotional connection we both have to water as a material and as bodies. Experiencing a new body of water using my own body guided by Cleo’s instructions, provoked an intuitive approach. Through this, I felt closer to the body of water (than I usually would with a new place) and helped to increase my appreciation for our natural world in Yorkshire.
I think this project is not only about our personal connections to the bodies of water but also our connection between each other as artists. Completing the communication between the two bodies of water through the water deposit, ties up the cycle to emphasise the links between water, human connection and life.”
“Despite the preexisting links one might have been able to find between mine and Ruby’s work, it was important to us that this project shouldn’t be based on our previous experiments, but instead be something new altogether. At the core of this project is the challenge of collaboration with physical distance between us and how we could link that to water, which can find a way to connect one place to another, however many miles apart.
Ursula K. Le Guin said “water chooses the lowest path, not the high road”. When I discovered that the original source of Regent’s Park lake, Tyburn Brook, no longer exists above ground, I understood that this body of water, amongst others, holds more secrets than we would first imagine. The exploration we have undertaken imagines water as capable of holding such secrets, and perhaps even capable of communicating them.”