Pictured: Big Felt and Bog Pool, from Tenderbog by Laura Harrington and Feral Practice (Image Credit: Juri Vlassov)
Two artists Laura Harrington and Feral Practice (Fiona), who work together on the UK WaterLANDS residency took part in an exhibition, ‘Unbounded within – Symbiotic Subjectivities’, in Pärnu, Estonia.
They joined four more WaterLANDS artists in residence and five other artists from Norway and Estonia to produce work alongside the WaterLANDS General Assembly.
The exhibition – curated by Elo Liiv, who is the Estonian waterLANDS artist in residence – explored the fading boundaries between humans and the environment in the Anthropocene, as ecological crisis and technological development force us to rethink our place in the world. It is about a journey from ‘I’ to ‘we’, where ‘we’ can encompass not only other humans, but also bacteria, the fungal kingdom, the atmosphere, and mineral flows.
The WaterLANDS artist’s work touches on key interconnected topics related to wetlands and restoration, including extraction and its legacies, care as a practice in the context of restoration, representation and memory, and participatory actions to reveal environmental change, amongst others.
Tenderbog
Laura and Fiona presented their work Tenderbog – which is still in progress – and has emerged from their residency. It explores parallels between peatland restoration and human medicine, nurturing empathy with remote and fragile lands and considering micro and macro contexts, materials, techniques and problems.
They ran a workshop at University of Leeds about wound healing across human healthcare and peatland restoration. There are strikingly similar issues in these very different contexts around flows (of water, lymph, blood) that get out of balance – too much or too little, blockage or flood. And how these hydrological flows are entangled with other flows – of money, profit and power.
Nurses, researchers in wound care, people with lived experience of chronic and traumatic wounds, peatland conservationists and hydrologists were invited to share their expertise and ideas across disciplinary boundaries. Whilst in discussion they creatively engaging with materials used in wound care, making sculptures that responded to ideas around flow and constriction.
These conversations and many more informed one of the huge sound sculptures that was transported to Estonia for the exhibition, which is part of their four residency and ongoing exploration of peatlands in the Great North Bog.
Exhibits for Estonia exhibition
The two huge sculptures, Big Felt and Bog Pool, were made using protective materials and practices inspired by different species, such as caddis fly larvae who make protective architectures from the materials they find, bound together with silk from their bodies.
“One is made of spruce bark and latex, the action of gathering and glueing toform a protective ‘armour’ inspired by the Caddisfly larvae we have loved meeting in bog pools. Spruce is especially appropriate as plantations of Sitka or Norway spruce have been the fate of many of northern England’s bogs, just one of many ways people have tried to make them pay. Instead of letting them be the powerhouses of biodiversity and carbon capture they are naturally.” Laura
“The other is made of wool, felted by many hands, and feet, from the Swaledale and Shetland sheep who are also deeply intertwined with the fate of upland peat bogs. Many bogs were drained to make sheep pasture. Now peatland restoration workers are working with farmers trying to find new ways to make a living from sheep that can help, not harm, the bogs.” Feral Practice
The sculptures hung from the ceiling in a circle, a ‘Tenderbog embrace’ which visitors entered to listen to sound works that mingle voices drawing together material from the artists’ interdisciplinary research with specialists in the healing of chronic wounds in peat and human bodies, and with experts in the biodiversity of peat pools and the human gut microbiome.
“One of the highlights of this ambitious EU wide project has been the generous and creativenteraction we’ve had with the other Waterlands artists, so it was a total treat to see their works in real life and work together to make this show, which includes Estonian artists alongside all the Waterlands team.” Laura
“All bodies suffer, get damaged and wounds can arrive from outside or inside. Peatlands have suffered hugely at the hands of humans over centuries.
“The two sound sculptures bring together our dialogical research into specific parallels between human health care and peatland restoration. Bodies that can be wounded. Portals into biodiversity. Wrapping, mending, looking closely. Flows. Empathy.” Feral Practice
“It was really special for me to see Fiona and Laura’s work exhibited in Estonia. No matter the ‘abstract’ nature of their work, it was very evident, even patent I would say, to me how it reflects the conversations and the joint experience that we had all gone through as a team and that have led to their art.
“I could feel ‘them’ (Fiona, Laura, the rest of the team) and ‘me’ interwoven in these pieces as related entities that meet one and other through the ‘fabric’ that peatlands represent to us all.
“To me this is this the very sense of what these art pieces bring to WATERLANDS, they are the reflect of our material and inmaterial relationship, amongst ourselves and with peatlands. I loved experiencing this art.” Professor Julia Martin-Ortega, Associate Director of water@leeds at University of Leeds, and a member of the WaterLANDS UK team
Pictured: Laura (left) and Fiona with their sculpture