RCA SHOW
30 June - 3 July 2023
Deep Breath
The Thames may have had no tides in the past.
It breathed flat and quiet.
The tide is a deep breath for the river today.
It emotional surges twice a day.
London used to be a malaria marshland.
People built walls to cut off the river,
To survive and gain farm land.
But the skin(wall) did not stop in front of the body,
it wrapped the river in turn.
The unstable skin beats each other,
sometimes advancing and sometimes retreating.
Self-heals imperceptibly.
'Deep Breath' installation collection
video, textile pieces made of Thames river mud, riverbed, cotton fabric.
The Deep Breath collection was created and finally completed during my year at the Royal College of Art( RCA). The concept of “Deep Breath” is a narrative of the history of the Thames' interaction with humans. It was presented as a video installation at the RCA Show 2023.
The project is about how we access the river in the urban environment - to be curious and to discover subtle things. It consists of a film 'Deep Breath', 2023 and 5 textile pieces:
Collecting tides
Touching the belly
They need to Breath
Exhibition Review
The installation is accessible for the audience to have different layers of understanding. Written with a poem on the label and prepared with a video, the installation changes the way we experience time and space in familiar yet undiscovered landscapes. The public may not know the meaning and symbolism of the works, but they can also easily get their own experience. Although we have become accustomed to the Thames around us, people still felt incredible about seeing the tide and touching the riverbed. They shared experiences about becoming curious about the history of the river, changes in different locations, and learned about the truth that the riverbed is slowly recovering. As my work moved from the riverbed below Battersea Bridge upstream to Hammersmith Bridge, I discovered and heard the recovery of the riverbed. The sound of the river flowing under the river bed was as subtle as the collision of the tentacles of a colony of ants. These sounds also led me to discover the existence of snails and other creatures crawling slowly on the river bed.
They need to Breathe, 2023 was created when I extracted clay from Thames topsoil. I collected my first Thames mud on the embankment stairs, but the next day they were washed away by river tide and never found again. Therefore, I needed to carefully sift through the topsoil to extract the clay. Through this process, I gained insights into the condition of the riverbed by interacting with the river mud, which supports life. During the clay extraction process, I was surprised to discover formations resembling bodies and expressions, such as stomachs and faces. These formations conveyed the sensation that the river itself breathes through its body.
The Skin of the River at Battersea Bridge, 2023 is a textile poem telling the story of how tides come. The grey cloth was cut into the shape of the vest as I found it very convenient for extracting the clay. The stains left by mud are right where the belly should be. This fabric is a tool for repeatedly extracting clay. Industrially produced textiles will be made into different widths according to different uses of making garment or curtains. I chose the cotton cloth designed for making garments and cut it to the size of the body and kept the leftovers in the pattern. Then hang it back to the wall of the river. The fabric, mud stains, and skin are often unnoticed corners of the landscape. But in the photo, they are moved to the middle and become a conspicuous existence. It later developed into another textile piece, Belly of the River, 2023.
We are at the edge where what appears to be a solid landscape is actually unstable, and those edges that we cannot see. We have gotten so used to a lot of existence for a while, but they're unstable, Including people living in the corner of the city. We see it but don't really pay attention and get close.
Written by August 2023
“The most beautiful encounter to be as your student, Freddie”
