CliffTown Museum 17th May - 14th June 2025

Simon, Jo, (Cliftown Conservation Society) Wendy, (Leigh Art Trail) helping to install the work.

After a number of discussions, Simon began to work with the sand, mud and sedimentation found on the beaches of the estuary creating a number of colour patches and eventually ground paint mixtures for use in his paintings. Simon’s painting began to explore themes of sedimentation, deposits and the capture of mudflats observed overtime. There was a graduation in Simons painting from a more abstract interpretation to land and seascape perspectives involving depositions from natural and industrial impacts.

Tom began to develop ideas for the video aspect attempting to incorporate the colours Simon had created, eventually working with the top water layer of the Thames estuary. Again through discussions with Simon a theme emerged of an ever changing visual movement – the problem to be solved was how to represent this movement? In the end after a lot of time mulling things over the solution relied on traditional photographic techniques, shutter speed and exposure, using a forty year old Vivitar lens, giving a unique feel to the images, revealing the motion in the waves.

Originally part of the idea was to place a video in the phone box but lack of power prevented that proposal. The video (viewed online) was ultimately derived from still photographs placed in the glass windows of the phone box, these images explored the motion of the Thames and deposits, The still visuals are reformulated within the video, which in turn is derived from the motion caught in the photographs. 

The outcomes were mediated through an intuitive visual understanding of the visual medium of painting and photography, capturing two viewpoints. Both informing the other, the result is a visual work that is simultaneously dynamic and still, held in the confines of the Clifftown Museum BT Phone box.