Crossing

In 2017 I was asked to create an exhibition centred around a film for Aberystwyth University Ceramics Collection. The work created was partly inspired by the legend of Tresaith, a small coastal village in Mid Wales.

When a King of Ireland had seven troublesome daughters, he decided to cast them away in a boat without sails. The currents carried them east and they came ashore upon a Welsh beach. They were rescued shortly afterwards by seven local farmers, with whom they fell in love and married. The place was named Tresaith, or ‘Place of Seven’, for each of the daughters who made it their home.

Fitted with tracking devices, seven ceramic vessels were set adrift on Sunday, 5th June 2017 from Wicklow on the east coast of Ireland. The hope was that they would drift across the Irish Sea and eventually reach the west coast of Wales. Due to wind and tide the vessels were taken north, missing Wales altogether, three landing on the Isle of Man on Sunday, 11th June after seven days at sea. After fourteen days at sea, two landed on the coast of Cumbria. One has never given a signal, its location unknown, and another vessel last gave a signal in the busy shipping lane between Holyhead and Dublin.

This piece tells a story about our relationship with the sea, how it facilitates the movement of people, the exchange of ideas and the enrichment of cultural diversity. Like most myths and legends, it holds universal truths. Being cast adrift is a classic human tale, from stories of the medieval saints to The Tempest and Robinson Crusoe, not to mention the recent trials of refugees adrift in the Mediterranean and English Channel or the Vietnamese boat people of the 1980s.

The vulnerability of the vessels at sea was tangible, drifting towards Wales dependent entirely on wind and tide. Discovering three of the vessels broken on the shores of the Isle of Man, I found the project all the more poignant. Setting them adrift and retrieving them after their journey was far more of an emotional experience than I had anticipated. The human stories the project invokes are so long felt that they have become part of the folklore of the sea, ancient tales still experienced to this day. Only one survived its journey intact, landing on the beach at Mawbray in Cumbria.