Public access to England’s watercourses amounts to only 3% of the 42,700 miles available.
“If you’re by a river, on a river or in a river, there’s a 97% chance that you’re not allowed to be there.”
Nick Hayes, The battle for England’s waterways, 2019
Where a watercourse divides two adjoining properties (in this case public / private) the boundary is defined by the centreline of the water between the opposing banks. By its very definition that line cannot be fixed, like a wall or a fence, but is in a constant state of flux. Over time the edges of the banks ebb and flow; endlessly reconfigured by accumulations and detritions, floods and droughts, damage and repair. With each new amendment to the physical geometry of the banks, the boundary shifts; it meanders and weaves, mimicking the passage lines of detritus floating on the surface above.
The images presented here collectively represent an attempt to map this condition, to make manifest this tenuous line of ownership concealed below the surface.
Riparian Rights was a response to Right to Roam; an open call for work investigating the issue of land rights, access and trespass.
An edited version of the work is included in a Journal published by Inside The Outside
Your dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so, -the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines; see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss.
The Works of John Ruskin, Vol. 15, E. T. Cook & A. Wedderburn (eds), 1904
