Hilary Kneale Making Space artist in residence.

I have been recording a little of my experience each day for the Summer Dance blog. I find that the process of unfolding a work in a new environment always interesting and surprising!

I have been working with the element of water for the last year and a half, as you will see if you open the Making Space page on the Summer Dancing site and click on my name.

Day 1.I arrived here on Monday morning having never been to the city of Coventry. I was swept up in the movement of the ring road and was eventually spat out somewhere in the area of part of the University! I entered my studio base through the back of the Ellen Terry building, seeing the inner workings of the building before her face, which is an old cinema! My studio space is plentiful and the floor is coated with a black lino which allows me to work freely with water, water colour in deep black on black! I unloaded all the glass containers and stools and jars containing water from different places in the country and the world, into this room with the black floor, realising that although I could create an almost instant landscape in the room with the objects I had brought, I had no idea about the landscape of the building, its inner workings or how it was placed within the larger workings of the city. I had heard of the cathedral, I had heard of car manufacture, I had heard of massive bombings during the blitz, the whole landscape of the city and its multi layers is new to me. So I began within the studio, marking the space around me with the objects, a landscape both totally new and somehow familiar.

Day 2.I have begun to orientate myself in the city and to look for the lifeblood of the city, its water. Under the city runs a river, the Sherbourne. I could see some of its course plotted on the city map. I traced the river towards its source on Watery Lane near Corley Moor and where it entered the city under Meadow Lane and again where it re-emerged at Gosford Street roundabout; there may be a glimpse of the river in the centre of town. I have spent the second day following the river towards its source, the river running under the bridge at Four Pounds Avenue has hidden secrets, the up stream river bed is full of coins as for wishes and the down stream side has an offering of a circlet of red rose buds, as I walked across the open space on my way out of the city, I stopped to watch a lesser spotted woodpecker feed its noisily insistent young in side a hole in a river willow. I walked out of the city as far as Allesley taking time to pause in the nearby meadow on the edge of the Sherbourne as a stream, the red clay here reflects the colour of the stone and brick that built the city. I exchanged water from the source of the Thames with water from the Sherbourne, creating a simple ritual to mark the connection of all living things within the web of life 

I caught the bus back to town and then found my way to the downstream part of the river at Gosford roundabout at the end of Jordan Well and walked beside it to the end of the first playing field. The river on this side of town is a sad affair, it is full of the discarded and unwanted, there is a stagnant smell about it in the air and the city rats glean the banks for food. Trees border the river in places, some sprout from the damp walls of the old brick industrial buildings doing their work of transpiration as best they can. I hope to follow the water further out of the city to see how it fares.

I again exchanged water that I had collected from the source of the Thames, with this tired city water way and hope that the homeopathic essence of the newly emerged water from the source of a sister river would assist in its revitalization. I take time to thank this lifeblood of the land for its hidden work under the city.

 Part of the work I undertake with water, is simply to acknowledge its existence and its wildness in different places on the earth. I feel an important part of intuitive live art is its healing power, the maker and the witness have the possibility to view something familiar, from a different perspective and in waking up into the ‘new view’ with a change to see or respond differently. Water is something that each of us can so easily take for granted, we forget that it is wild, all its origins are wild, we tame it to serve us, often without thanks.

I imagine that many Coventry city dwellers do not know of the existence of a river beneath the streets. As I walk the land beside the river, both through fields beside the ‘young’ waterway and across the city itself over the hidden river, I am aware that I am beginning to relax into my new surroundings, my body begins making sense of the environment through movement and covering ground. The time I take for a physical arrival allows my creative senses to open and begin to respond. I can begin to ‘see’ through many layers at the same time.

Once back in the city, I have more questions than answers, a receptionist in the City Hall directs me to the Library in the Herbert Gallery for historical information on the path of the river. I am directed to a copy of a map of the city created in 1750, held in the Herbert Gallery Library, which shows the river running openly through the city. I take photocopies of the maps with me into the studio.

Day 3. The installation in my studio shifts daily, it is a work in progress, a visible process, the shifts are subtle and shift as my intuitive understanding of this part of the earth and the city itself begins to grow.

I have always had a close relationship with land and can often sense hidden stories. I set out to see if I can pick up a sense of where the river runs under the city. There is a place on the contemporary city map called The Burges, which is also on the 1750 map, I think there were two bridges at this point at one time. When I come to The Burges, the land begins to fall as though into a river basin, something pulls me into Palmer Lane between two buildings and towards a building site at the back. I turn my eyes to the right and there is the river! It is a joy to find it, seeing this untamable expression of life force in the open air between one culvert and the next! I hang out of the window of the Coventry Cross Pub to get a better view and watch it flow!

Back it the studio I compare old body maps I have of the flow of lymphatic fluids through legs, coloured blue, with the old river maps of the city.

The water ‘spills’ off the maps and into watery landscapes I create on the floor of the studio, they change fast, the air conditioning in the windowless room makes the water evaporate rapidly, so the temporary ‘rivers’ I make, turn to lakes and then ponds and then disappear leaving an almost invisible record through the deposited salts the water leaves on the floor. I find it exciting to paint with water on to a black floor! The room feels animated and alive with the presence of the changing water.

I am equally curious about the flow of the river under the city. Through an Internet search, I find photographs taken inside the river culverts under the city, many of the concrete structures that contain the water seem to have been built around the old bridges! I quite fancy an adventure following the river through the culverts! I noticed a pair of waders for sale in the indoor market…… all I would need is a sneaky disposition and a torch! This city is full of surprises!

Late in the afternoon I keep an appointment with Tom at the White Friars Tavern, I take narrow empty bottles with me. This ancient building still has an open well, the drop is 40', and Tom has agreed that I can fish for water! I drop the narrow bottle through the iron grid attached to a ball of string and haul it up full of cold clear water. Tom tells me that there are at least two other wells in the area. He directs me to a second well in the car park of the Jaguar building, which I find on the way back to my digs. Once again I fish for water through the safety grill, I again strike lucky but the water in this well is murky. I feel glad that the tops of these ancient wells are still visible and available. The area is known as Jordan Well both on the contemporary and the older maps of the city. Years ago these wells were created by digging through the bedrock of the city.

Day 4. My understanding of the various layers physical landscape I am working within, is shifting constantly, as is their relationship to each other.

I learn more and more about the landscape of the city each day and brings a shift of understanding of both the shape of the land under the buildings and the roads and building themselves. The cityscape, could seem fixed, however its hugely varied history is evident at every turn.

The flow of traffic is constant through the arteries of the raised ring road that circumnavigates the city, almost mapping the now dissolved ancient city walls. The ring road is linked to the larger roads, the veins, that cross the city and extend out to its edges. Series of underpasses and bridges direct the flow of human footfall. The river, hidden though it is, divides the city in two, still nourishing its heart.

Ancient maps divulge the story of encroaching buildings, leaving the river now invisible in the city centre apart from the glimpse of flowing water below Pound Lane. I visit the Coventry Cross pub and hang out of the window with dangled jar on string and collect river water where is flows out from under the kebab takeaway.

All this city and river investigation is allowing me to settle in my body in the windowless studio in the Ellen Terry Building of Coventry University and the work in response begins to flow. The installation I am devising shifts with my discoveries of the landscape of the city and in particular to the river. The stories of this small and hidden river reverberate around me as I work creating a dialogue between water, city maps, and body maps. I work intuitively responding to the senses of my own body and opening to the maps of body fluid and river fluid that adorn the walls. The landscapes seem to grow and to shrink, they mirror each other as they change at different tempos. The hidden river in the body of the city reflects the moving water that I am working with, in the body of the building, on the floor of the studio and the fluids in constant shift within my own body. My body, the body of the building and the body of the city, I seem to be working in all three from the inside out.

As I was in the Herbert library studying some of the old city maps, rain and then hail began to fall heavily over the city, heavy gushing useful rain that swept off the library roof in a sheet and bounced off the path outside the window. I imagined the river culverts under the city filling in time with the newly fallen water and the sweep of its freshness sluicing them out, the city itself drinking in the new fresh water.

Day5. As I went to bed last night I decided to find my way to the end of the River Sherbourne where it runs into the Sowe in the morning, before I began work in the studio.

I think I need to go into the market and get those waders, I would do better wearing them and walking along the riverbed! The river is not easy to follow on foot, once it leaves the city the ‘A’ roads taking traffic through the midlands run parallel to the river and anyone travelling by foot is directed away from the water and the arterial roads.

I managed to walk beside the river for a short way and watched it as it flowed under the old Abbey Bridge at Whitley, here the river is bordered by many mature water loving trees and there is a path that allows access for a short way by foot.

I find it difficult to feel optimistic about human care of vital natural resources when watching wild water flow over as much detritus as there is on this riverbed. I had the thought, though, that however it looks now, the river is perhaps cleaner than at any time of ‘industrial’ human habitation on its banks. Rivers have been used to shift raw sewage for thousands of years and I am sure that those in the past, responsible for the Coventry ribbon factories and early car plants, unwittingly discharged much unwanted effluent into the delicate Sherbourne.

The closer I get to the meeting point of the Rivers Sherbourne and Sowe the more difficult it becomes to walk near the river. Finally I negotiate the roundabout and flyover where the A45 crosses the A444, this is not a place for pedestrians, I would be much safer on the riverbed in those waders! I walk between barriers and bridges, wait for gaps in traffic that speeds past me, I slide down banks covered in discarded bottles, cans, plastic bags and a toilet to the side of the Sherbourne where it flows under the A45 and the two slipways onto the road. I walk beside the river under these roads. I found it very moving to witness the river, it nourishes the land around it, above the river, the traffic is in constant motion.

I could not get to the point where the two rivers meet, I could see the meeting point of the two bodies of water from the bridge over the Sowe. I collected some water from the Sherbourne at the point where it emerged from under the A45 and took some time to thank the water for its work.

I was reminded of some words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that my father gave to me, that had been hung on the wall of the bathroom in his childhood home. I am sure that St. Francis knew his place within the whole web of life.

Praise God for our sister water

For she is serviceable to us

And humble

And pure

And very clean

I return to the studio with the collected and begin to digest the experiences

through working within the installation.