Estuary-Scapes
Estuary-Scapes
Living in an estuary village in West Wales, Sarah has inevitably been influenced by her daily walks and life in the locality. The impressions on the coast marked by the tide, winds, objects and creatures on the sands, are unique and transient; the sands as a tabla rasa being erased twice a lunar day by the tides which come racing in and out, the force of the moon over a spinning earth. Carmarthen Bay, being part of the Bristol Channel tidal range, the second highest in the world, has particularly dramatic estuary and sand scapes.
Sarah ran a two day event as part of CROFT LAB, a Space Place Practice residency at The Laundrette Studio in Bristol. This involved a River Severn estuary walk followed by a Symposium the following day titled Estuary scapes with artists and academics presenting their work in response to estuaries. Sarah will be running another symposium on River/Estuary early in 2025 as part of Spike Island Associates’ program.
In Search of The Coracle
The coracle is a small river vessel that has been in use in Wales for at least 2000 years. In west Wales. it was predominantly used as a single person fishing vessel (coracle fishermen use a net between two boats) however it has had other uses such a ferrying people and material across rivers and to assist with river sheep dipping.
“ A medieval traveller in Wales, 800 years ago saw such men and marvelled at boats ‘made of twigs, not oblong nor pointed but almost round, or rather triangular, covered both within and without with raw hides…The fisherman according to the custom, of the country, in going to and from the rivers, carry these boats on their shoulders” Giraldus de Barri (Gerald of Wales) AD 1188
The word ‘twigs’ referred to here were of course more substantial than that term implies today; hazel, ash or willow sticks were cleaved or sawn as laths (ash)
In Search of the Coracle is an ongoing project concerning the west Wales coracles in Sarah’s locality particularly that of the river Tywi /Towy. Sarah describes her research as a design anthropology by being involved with a making process with people from the tradition and looking at the design variations/evolutions.
This project page is currently being updated…..
