2. Confluence

This 3-screen 10 minute film with audio looks at the dynamic flow of the Humber, following the paths of the major rivers that feed into the estuary, and the nature and power of water flow in and out of the estuary. Still Image sequences, audio, infra-red aerial photography (LiDAR), archival and recent film and images, navigational maps and film are used to capture this landscape’s mutable nature, where ever-changing conditions and each succeeding wave of human habitation have left their trace.

 The work reflects the water realm of tidal ebb and flow, and the amazing estuarine balance or confluence; the river flow in counterbalancing the incoming tides. This enables the lifeblood of shipping, and maintains a complex environment, one that is at once wild, cultivated and industrial. The work reflects the amazing and incongruous results of this confluence - large ships sailing along the Trent towards Goole, and phenomena such as the high tide bore waves (the Trent Aegir) that traverse from the sea along the Humber and along the Trent, sometimes as far as Gainsborough. The work explores how water, once no longer in check, floods and transforms, turning fields into lakes and transforming once inhabited houses from ordinary, to the ‘uncanny’ or ‘Un-Heimlich’.