Current Projects & News
UK RIVER SUMMIT 2026
With my colleagues at XAP (Cross Arts Projects), we were delighted to be invited by Claire Zambuni, CEO and Founder of Future For Water, to bring our three-part installation, Watershed, to the UK River Summit 2026 in Henley on Thames.
The River Summit is a unique forum, bringing together water company leaders, regulators, technologists, farmers, scientists, campaigners, politicians, artists and community members, to share ideas and to ask some tough questions. Kicking off the first day, Claire asked: “There’s clearly a lot of activity aimed at improving the state of rivers and water services, but how do we know how much progress is actually being made?”
The theme of this year’s Summit was “Power of People”, recognising the crucial contribution of citizen scientists, investigators and activists in bringing water companies and regulators to account. An important new initiative was launched – Make Citizen Data Count – to get citizen science data formally included in new regulatory systems.
taking it to Parliament
Our collective, XAP, originally created Watershed: A River’s Call to Action as a commission for St Alban’s Cathedral. With the level of interest, and the critical importance of the issues we were addressing, we realised that it could be the start of many installations, so we have been taking the artworks on tour, to reach a wider audience in the UK.
When MP Daisy Cooper offered us the opportunity to exhibit in the Houses of Parliament, we eagerly accepted – a chance to engage with Members of Parliament and Peers about the state of our rivers, the new Clean Water Bill and the private member’s bill to recognise UK chalk streams as a serial UNESCO World Heritage Site. Amanda Yorwerth, from Environment Matters, Mix 92.6FM, invited us to talk about our experiences at the Houses of Parliament. You can hear the episode here.
BOLD IN ALL WEATHERS!
It’s hard to believe that this Ladies’ Pond Centenary Residency year is coming to an end! I’ve had the best time, experimenting with completely new things. And there’s so much more to do, even after the end of the residency. I will revisit some of the things that I had to put aside early on, such as harvesting bacterial electricity, and I will expand my work on creating and using inks from foraged plants. I especially enjoyed painting some detailed botanical ‘self portraits’, using just the colours extracted from the plant itself.
I am proud to have shared the residency with such talented, funny and generous women artists, working across a wonderful range of processes and media. Our show, Bold in All Weathers, is open until the Autumn Equinox at Lauderdale House in London: https://www.lauderdalehouse.org.uk/whats-on/kenwood-ladies-pond-exhibition.
Watershed: A River’s Call to Action
Our collective, XAP, have just got news that our project Watershed has been invited to be exhibited at the Houses of Parliament from 29th June to 3rd July! Watershed: A River’s Call to Action is a touring set of large-scale installations and programme of events, drawing attention to the acute vulnerability of our UK rivers. Each installation responds to the local community and the particular river habitats. Audiences at the Houses of Parliament will be Members and Peers – an opportunity to engage with them, via our artworks, while the many issues of river quality, water supply and special rivers protection are being debated, in particular, the Clean Water Bill, listed in the recent King’s speech, and the Private Members’ Chalk Streams (UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site) Bill.
Artist in residence – hampstead heath
I’m thrilled to have been selected as an Artist in Residence at the Ladies’ Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath in London, as part of its Centenary celebrations. From Autumn Equinox 2025 to Autumn Equinox 2026, I’ll be exploring the pond as a place of transformation and sublimation, celebrating its profound importance in the lives of thousands of women and girls who have swum there over the century. In my experiments I’ll be extracting the coloured compounds and fibres from the surrounding flora, harnessing electricity from the microbial life in the mud, to construct and power delicate kinetic structures. This brings together many of the things that really excite me: chemistry, colour, plants, electricity, alchemy, making new things to share with new audiences!
my local Ancient woodland
I continue hands-on conservation and survey work in my local urban Ancient Woodland – Queen’s Wood in north London. This beautiful and fragile ecosystem has evolved, with varying human interventions, over centuries, possibly thousands of years. Like most public green spaces, it finds itself under pressure from all directions – marooned by urban development, loved to death during Covid lockdowns, and now having to respond to the floods and droughts of climate change.