WATERMARKED

Carol Laidler, Pat Jamieson

"It is the other rivers that lie Lower, that touch us only in dreams That never surface. We feel their tug As a dowser's rod bends to the surface below"

Water resonates with our saltier selves, our amniotic beginnings, bodily fluids, tidal ebbings and flowings, the unplumbed depths that lie beneath the surface.

The source of the River Frome lies just outside the city boundary. It curves round in a great arc and then flows towards the Avon in the heart of Bristol. Over years this little river has been kicked aside and covered over. It is a hidden artery culverted in concrete for much of its urban length, emerging only occasionally from these artificial caverns. There is a real sense that this river no longer has a place in the contemporary manufactured landscape of the city. Nonetheless this awkward and unwanted little body of water persists.

In the process of mapping the physical and metaphorical course of the river, we have been walking the length of the River Frome from outside the Watershed where the river ingloriously spills into the Floating Harbour, along its 20 mile course on an expedition to its source. Stopping to flypost words that resonate within both their urban and rural settings, we are leaving a paper trail to create a textual map.