The Water Replies

Part of Estuary 2021, The Water Replies was a project led by poets Selina Nwulu and Caroline Bird, inviting participants to keep a creative journal as a way of sharing their relationship to the Thames Estuary region and life alongside the water in both North Kent and South Essex. Participating remotely from Australia, the artist’s journal contribution follows the threads of research began during an artist residency with Acme in 2017.

The journal is an experimental response to the artist’s experience and memory of the Thames Estuary, incorporating text, drawing and collage. She drew on the liminal nature of the estuary region, comprised of vast mudflats, wetlands and marshes that daily shift between land and water. She was struck by the governance of the tide upon this low-lying terrain, forever on the verge of dissolving into the sea. The artist’s journal drawings waver and change state, speaking to landscapes infused with water; margins collapsing, rearranging, reshaping, at once solid and liquid, alive. Collaged fragments incorporate performative actions that took place on the estuary as well as found imagery, both suggestive of a part of England that seems electric with possibility.

The Water Replies included both physical and online presentations as part of Estuary 2021, which took place from 22 May- 13 June 2021.