Trudi Entwistle

As an independent researcher, her recent work was submitted to the REF 2021. Her project ‘Watershed’ looked at how artistic intervention can address problems of fluvial damage to landscape while emphasising its natural beauty? Focusing on the South Pennines, Watershed occupies an area where ecology and aesthetics meet, its understanding of landscape drawn from interdisciplinary approaches.

Facilitated by a Leverhulme artist in residency grant, Watershed was a culmination of site-specific fieldwork whose outputs – Upstream (2014), Ripple (2014), and Hebden Water (2017) – entailed working with professionals from various sectors: scientists from water@Leeds, University of Leeds (UK’s largest centre for water research); engineers from Yorkshire Water; and local farmers. A meditation on surface and reflection, Ripple employed fertiliser to etch geometric undulations into vegetation, producing different rates of growth; Hebden Water (produced with sound artist Paul Ratcliff) was an audio-visual depiction of how water shapes landscape and culture; while the exhibition Upstream assembled several works exploring the impact of human activity on water as it issues from its moorland source. Ripple and Hebden Water were showcased in further exhibitions at the National Trust’s Gibson Mill (2014, 2017), and presented at the conferences ‘Places for Art and Art for Places’ (Hebden Bridge, 2014); and ‘Arts, Farmers and Philosophers’ (Bowes Museum, Teesdale, 2017). Ripple was commissioned by Yorkshire Water and Pennine Prospects for the Tour De France’s Grand depart.

Watershed’s contribution to discourses on land use, water quality and flooding comes from direct hydrographic experience. By blurring distinctions between the landscape’s aesthetic and ecological character, it inculcates the mindset required to address a situation in which ‘Climate change projections suggest the frequency and severity of flooding is likely to increase over the next century’ (IPCC, 2014).