UK Hydrographic Office 

Sara has been invited to explore the UK Hydrographic Office archive in Taunton. Amidst this treasure trove of maritime history, it contains records and charts of all the dynamic changes to navigable waterways over the last 240 years. The archive of Notices To Mariners (NMRs) hold all the shifting dynamics of the depths, movements and changes to the navigationaly significant areas, documenting our constantly changing world and seabeds. 

She has been looking at the ways in which humans have naively altered coastlines before trying to mend 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.  

Sara has been taking inspiration from the collection of ‘coastal views’ in the archive. These are visual depictions of the coastline historically painted by artists in rowing boats 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. 

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. She aims to attempt to collect her own ‘Coastal Views’ of the Somerset coast with the help of drones, kayak clubs, film documentation, sketches and photographs taken from sea. She is currently investigating access to contemporary depth-measuring data sources to inform a new body of painted and drawn works on paper, charts and other surfaces. The works will 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.