‘In The Bottom of Lakes and Rivers’  2024. 

Created and exhibited as part of the Proto residency with Future Everything, Stockport. 

Digital Sculpture, video, sound and AR work. 

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This work is a watery liminal portal weaving interconnected histories and folklore that have haunted the artist since experiencing grief. The work draws on the medieval poem The Pearl, and local histories around the ancient bog body sacrifice found in Horwich in the 1940s and the fool of Haigh Hall, Wigan in the 1600s who described his body laying at the bottom of the River Douglas. These narratives speak of a concurrent parallel realm under water and tell the story of latent potential. 

 

The work explores the interconnected dimensions of time and space where histories and the present, folklore and fact, digital and ‘real’, living and dead can intermingle. The title comes from author Robert Burton who in 1652 debated where birds go in the winter. He asked “doe they ly hid (as Olaus affirmes) in the bottome of lakes and rivers, spiritum continentes” The latin translating as holding the breath or containing their spirit.