Angela Findlay
Angela Findlay is an artist, speaker and author of In My Grandfather’s Shadow (Penguin, 2022). Her artistic practice is rooted in a deep sensitivity to place, memory and the people and stories that have been forgotten or overlooked by history.
Working across painting, collage, installation and projection, and with materials ranging from Severn mud and earth to cake and oils, Angela creates works that combine visual storytelling with immersive and interactive experiences.
Her 25-year relationship with the River Severn, from living on its banks at Saul to later overlooking it across the Stroud valleys, has profoundly influenced both her life and her practice. She holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art, and her paintings have been exhibited widely across the UK and are held in private collections internationally.
Kel Portman
Kel Portman: a walking artist.
Over the years The River Severn has become a muse. One to be marvelled at, viewed and walked. The river is a companion and sometimes, an adversary.
Portman's walking practice treats movement through landscape as inquiry. Walking sharpens attention to the overlooked and lets place shape the work as it unfolds, privileging presence over planned outcomes. Influenced by early Chinese shan shui ("mountains and rivers poetry”) poets, he values quiet reflection, spontaneity, and responsiveness, while chance encounters, sounds, and shifting paths guide each walk.
Kel Portman is a walking artist, the co-founder of Walking arts collective Walking the Land and sits on the judging panel for the annual Marŝarto Awards
He regularly curates exhibitions and events in addition to working with other artists on projects that are based in the landscape.
His work is held in private collections in the USA and Europe
Kel is a retired Senior Lecturer in printmaking, digital arts and photography at the University of the Arts London and former Fulbright Exchange Professor
Alexander Caminada
Alexander Caminada returns to the River to seek out moments often overlooked, those that unfold on its fringes and beyond its banks. He is intrigued by the River’s response to human interaction and recognises our unavoidable influence on it and our relationship to it. He experiences the River as an existential place, his connection to the Universe.
Alex is an established commercial, portrait and landscape photographer. He’s a keen experimenter, always looking beyond clichés and expected forms.
He produces ambient, experimental and electronic music as Phonsonic, using field recordings to create soundscapes inspired by his time spent with the River.
Louisa Fairclough
Sound is central to Louisa Fairclough’s work, this includes sculptural installations with 16mm film and choral performances. Louisa is currently making sound/live work rooted in her lived experience of psychosis, a project supported by Arts Council England, elements of which are soon to be shown by Voices Gloucester and in a group show at Charleston Gallery in Lewes. Her recent solo show, Mental Falls, was at Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London (2024) and MIRROR Gallery at Arts University Plymouth (2025). Her 16mm film installation Bore Song was acquired by Contemporary Art Society for Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham. Louisa is represented by Danielle Arnaud gallery and is a founding member of BEEF (Bristol Experimental & Expanded Film).
Often at the time of the full moon, with my young son in tow, I would cycle to the Severn to pitch the tent on the river bank. A tidal river, the Severn is strangely compelling: as we stood at the edge of the river listening to the roar of the oncoming tide rushing in from the sea, I was (in my head) shouting across the river into the night. The tide carrying with it my grief to the river’s source before being pulled out to sea.
The resulting body of work used ground, tidal water, voice and light as material, and took the form of film loops, field recordings and drawings.
Bore Song is an attempt to describe distance, time and emotion in physical terms: the filmstrip as a measurement of the time it takes for the bore tide to pass, the length of a breath and the weight of grief.
https://louisafairclough.co.uk/archive/
Carolyn Black
Carolyn Black has an MA in Fine Art from Cardiff UWIC, BA and post-graduate Printmaking diploma, from Bristol UWE. She has shown works in many galleries and film events, and been shortlisted for Wells Contemporary, RWA Open, Trinity Buoy Wharf and NoPlaceArts MaterialsII.
She has an extensive track record as an artist, writer, printmaker and video filmmaker. In recent years, these disciplines have created a palimpsest of practice, melding drawing with video, experimenting with film and printmaking, mark making with ice and pigments.
The process of making and writing is ever in my mind. I play with materials, words, ideas and messy stuff, employing a wide range of media to make works that respond to the landscapes I inhabit.
In 2025 I moved house, away from my beloved muse - the River Severn. Now living in the hills of Wales, I have become fascinated by the dramatic landscape that surrounds me here. The towering peaks of the Brecons embrace me, feeding her practice daily. I seek to capture textures, weathers, and geological substances in my work.
My life is shifting, becoming slower and calmer. I'm stretching what I do with materials, literally. I draw with folds and creases in thick paper, then crunch and crush it, changing its physical presence, making it pliable, distorting its form.