This was my summer, self-directed residency for which I used a Wordpress blog site. https://chriswright.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/watery-ways-bleak-place/
Images can also be seen in the gallery here.
On May 7th, 2022, I wrote
‘This is a self-directed and unfunded residency. My intention is to spend three months on England’s waterways, travelling by narrowboat. It will be a testing space that will inform the development of new work through expanded use of materials with a focus on the waterways environs. Embodied within the potential new ways of working are ideas of sustainability, care of self (well-being) & care of the environment.
I began travelling on April 20th, 2022 and headed south on the River Soar and am now on the Grand Union Canal at Cosgrove. Why wait until now to write? The title of this residency includes the words Bleak Place and it is this bleak place that has prevented me from doing much more than keeping a diary and taking pictures. The world is in turmoil and I have been bowed down by it. Yesterday, I walking in the water meadows in search of the Rive Tove. I heard my first cuckoo of the year and began to have a little hope. So whilst I cannot forget everything that is happening, I acknowledge it all and will try to find ways to exist alongside it.’
It is now January, the residency was cut short after 6 weeks due to unavoidable family illness, but I have an enormous amount of work to develop even in that short time. I am now beginning to process that work.