Coastal Views

Sara has been undertaking a sporadic residency with the UK Hydrographic Office Archive in Taunton, Somerset. Amidst this treasure trove of maritime history, it contains records, surveys and charts of all the dynamic changes to navigable waterways over the last 230 years. The archive of Notices To Mariners (NMRs) hold all the shifting dynamics of the depths, movements and changes to the navigationally significant areas, documenting our constantly changing world and seabeds. The Archive carefully preserves all the historic documents, using acid-free archival cardboard bespoke folders and boxes. This conservation-approach to capturing the historic states of maritime exploration, navigation and change tells its own story of value and care. Sara questions how this compares to contemporary relationships with coasts and seas?

Studying the Archive has prompted consideration of the ways in which humans have altered coastlines before trying to reform them again, as well as natural changes like erosion and micro-changes such as the changing tides. Many of these changes are not visible within our human time scales, however the Hydrographic Office has been updating their charts to accommodate new changes in the form of Notices to Mariners or patches called NM Geographical Blocks, which visually update existing charts.  Much of the Archive content has been created and adapted as maritime warfare strategic documents. It is interesting to reflect on the resources made available to protect national boundaries, trade routes and access to resources and how this might compare to the inertia around making shifts in response to climate change / rising sea levels, despite the urgency.

Sara has been taking inspiration from the collection of ‘coastal views’ in the Archive. These are visual depictions of the coastline historically painted at sea, by artists or talented crew members onboard exploration or surveying vessels. They were typically long thin strip paintings and Sara has been experimenting with using this form to explore the coastline’s constant state of flux within the context of climate change. She has been playing with randomly imagining new coastlines as a comment on the arbitrary flawed nature of climate models that are unable to take into account the vast array of variables. 

Sara’s explorations interpret the coast and Severn Estuary today, yesterday and tomorrow.

The project and resulting works seek to examine the constant state of change within our coastlines and our muddled relationship with the sea.

Sara has been undertaking a period of R&D with the archive. Using earth pigment paints, foraged from along the edge of the Severn Estuary, the works endeavour to articulate our contemporary relationship with seas and waterways in a time of ubiquitous human air travel, whilst freight shipping fills our waterways and fuels our lives and concerns about over-fishing and water pollution grow.

The evolving body of works narrate the story of our changing relationship with the watery world and the liminal and shifting space where sea meets land, reinterpreting the Archive and sharing its story with a new voice.

Paintings from this series will be exhibited in ‘Painting – A Changed Environment’, at Messums West, Wiltshire in 2026.