Treading Water

Treading Water looks at the complex relationship between the Tragedy of the Commons and water, as it is used and exploited as a utility by late industrial capitalism. The work traces the journey of the watercourse in the locale of St. Leonards on Sea where the artist lives, in the wake of one of the biggest fines ever issued to a water company for historic sewage leaks in the summer of 2021. The silver gelatin prints were made from film that was both processed and subsequently printed using water samples taken at the site the images were made - right after an emergency storm overflow caused a sewage discharge from Southern Water into the watercourse.