River Clouds

Art on the River Dearne

River Clouds

In 2017 Patrick was commissioned by Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership to be an artist in residence highlighting the significance of the River Dearne and how it has shaped the people and landscape over centuries. The river is at the heart of the Dearne Valley but is often overlooked and forgotten. The residency aimed to raise awareness of the river, where it comes from, where it goes and the impact it has has on the area.

For this project Patrick created a series of temporary art interventions that made the River Dearne more visible within its landscape. These interventions also provided a way to engage with community members and groups to begin to unearth a multitude of other stories, people’s thoughts and memories about the river. The interventions themselves were deliberately provocative in nature and aimed to instigate a change in people’s attitudes towards the Dearne or at least remind them of its presence. The photographs below were shot onsite in collaboration with Anton Want.

Exploring traditions

Patrick wanted to explore links to English traditional painted landscapes of the 18th Century, the River Dearne is a beautiful river with many delightful vistas. People think of Barnsley as an industrial landscape but in recent decades a great amount of work as been done to clean up the river and surrounding landscape. One of the interventions used coloured smoke to highlight the river, landscape and evoke the work of John Constable, who used the river Stour as his inspiration for his series of idyllic British landscapes. Patrick wanted to highlight the beauty of the River Dearne alongside traditional representations.