Day 17. Final day in residence.
Each day that I have opened the studio and activated the installation by inhabiting it, the resulting actions have been totally different, I have worked both within previously executed forms and followed new and unexpected outcomes in the moment. This has enabled the work to feel alive as I continue to explore its possibilities with a curiosity. The form of each opening is also affected by the constellation of the particular viewers and what aspect they bring with them into the studio. I involve and include the viewer at some points in the work, by asking them to take care of a jar of water from the wide range of collected waters of the world which include precipitation, ocean and river water or I ask them to tend one of the large egg shapes that I fill with water.
The final opening was part action, part story telling from within the installation and my research both into the element of water and within the city. Towards the end, one or two of the viewers asked questions or asked to conduct their own small water experiments within the installation; this enabled me to witness even more avenues and possibilities available within the work!
I feel that over this residency, that by keeping the form of the actions as open as possible that I have created a very wide platform of creative possibility. This could be overwhelming, but the seemingly infinite possibilities have the container of the installation and the limitations of the element of water itself and the focus of my own particular creative language, therefore I feel that there is enough structure for the viewer to have their own very personal experience within the work.
In working between the environments of the river Sherbourne, the city of Coventry and the studio, I have created a real and visible context for the work, placing it within the immediate physical environment.
On a final note! During the time that I have been researching this particular step of the work in Coventry, I have had contact with many of the inhabitants who have added to the richness of my investigation in various ways, they given me directions, free bus rides when I didn’t have the correct change coming back from the river source, they have told me stories about the river and their lives, made me delicious coffee knowing by the second day that I only take half a sugar, they have stopped their cars turning off blaring music to ask me with genuine curiosity what I am doing with my hazel dowsing rod, others have been amazed to discover that there is a river under their city, they have taken me through their bookshops to see excavations for Roman remains, told me the history of their butcher shops and which car park the river is currently running under, they have called the police because I looked suspicious, they have allowed me to dangle bottles out of pub windows and down wells to collect indigenous water and much, much more.

Coventry is a city that has had to reinvent itself more than many others. The layers of its past are both visible and hidden, I have found it fascinating.