Alison Medd

ebb & flow

Found Driftwood and Barge Ironmongery, 560 x 230 mm, 2020.

In the 1930's Donald Sattin was an apprentice learning to build the barges we now see resting on fragments along the Thames:

‘Perhaps one of the worst jobs came near the completion of a new barge, and then we all went underneath, the youngest in the middle, I often had visions of the barge falling on me.... once underneath we started chiselling the waste tar and hair off the joints. This came off in a long strip and little bits stuck to our faces and got down our necks where the heat from our bodies melted them and joined our underwear to our skin…’
Just Off The Swale - D.L Sattin

It is so easy to romanticise the history of what we find along the Thames, the truth is so much harder and grittier.

During the main lockdown period I found I was able to walk briskly as exercise and would aim for the River Thames, I started to spend time on the small beaches especially around Deptford and Greenwich. The more I wandered along the beaches the more I became aware of what was washed up, driftwood and more. Especially the fixings from abandoned barges that had been left to decay. I made a series of small relief panels, some of which have been reunited with the river attached to various piers near the studio.