Di McGhee – Guest Speaker is a visual artist with a background in public art and socially engaged projects. Her site-specific installations respond to the immediate surroundings, often utilising or inspired by found and reclaimed materials. Her work presents environmental themes and issues such as climate change, pollution, erosion and adaptation on a public scale. She is an established artist, art educator, and researcher, exhibiting her work internationally.
FLOW
During a research trip to the Duddon Estuary, I noticed a small thistle-like flower that seemed to be thriving in the barren landscape of a post-industrial landscape. On a further visit, a boat trip around the Duddon, I experienced the power and unpredictability of the tide. Absorbing the experience through new viewpoints provided me with the visual cues I would need to make an installation. From a crouched vantage position, submerged in the colours and components of the safety gear, I perched with a personal feeling of unease about the forthcoming trip. These moments would be significant factors in the development of my response to this project. I set about conducting experiments to create a unit that would represent the vulnerability of the Carline thistle and be influenced by colours and fastenings I was up close to on the boat trip, elements that looked after me. I was also interested in the rituals of preparation before, during, and after the journey by the boat crew; rehydrating on return was an essential part of the post-trip care. Flow was installed on an inlet of marshland on the estuary. During the installation the tide progressed hastily leading to an intervention that created a tension between the tide and the work, highlighting the power of the tide and the fragility of the ecology.