July/August Exhibition - Anne Fox and Slow the Flow: The Flow Project
13th July - 25th August 2021
An exhibition celebrating 18 months of collaboration between Calderdale artist Anne Fox and Slow the Flow. Anne was appointed in March 2020 as Artist in Residence to help promote and interpret the environmental benefits of Natural Flood Management.
Slow The Flow is a local charity working to provide education in Natural Flood Management, Sustainable Drainage Systems, and other renewable methods of managing the environment.
Slow The Flow work by demonstrating how natural methods can complement hard-engineered solutions to reduce flood risk. Their work at Hardcastle Crags has started to provide a multitude of benefits, not only to the residents and businesses in Hebden Bridge but to the local ecology, improvements in water quality, and to improving natural habitats in and around Hardcastle Crags.
Anne’s body of work produced during this time, The Flow Project, has helped celebrate and raise awareness of the unique and fragile nature of our environment and has promoted ways in which people can work together to make positive changes.
The Flow Project follows and records Slow the Flow’s flood prevention interventions, and has led to the production of work that reflects, celebrates, and raises awareness of the unique and fragile nature of our environment, and helps to promote the ways in which people can work together to make positive changes.
Anne says:
“Undertaking this project has given new insight into the work of Slow the Flow, taking me to a range of habitats to examine them in new ways and consider how each small part of our upland and lowland environment can potentially be part of a solution to the problems of flooding in the valley.
“I have produced work in series for the most part and have studied and visited the River Calder and its catchment in the valley bottom, in higher upland areas and at its tributary sources high on the moors above Todmorden. I have learnt much about interventions such as leaky dams, and plants and trees which help to slow the floodwaters down, plants such as sphagnum, and grasses, heather, bracken, and woodland.
“With this project I was aiming to work in parallel with Slow the Flow, intending to show the processes and ideas they espouse in a new light and bring a different perspective to their work of establishing effective natural flood management interventions through the valley.”
The exhibition contains work from all the series she has undertaken during the project, with drawings and paintings both large and small. Excerpts of her work can be seen on her blog ‘The Flow Project’.
Graham Mynott, Executive Director of Hebden Bridge Community Association here at the Town Hall, says:
“Exhibitions at the Town Hall are an eclectic mix of pure art, exhibitions of local interest (often historical) and those supporting local events and organisations. We’re looking forward to this cross-over of Art and Slow the Flow showing the outcome of Anne’s time as Artist in Residence”
Adrian Horton, from Slow the Flow, says:
“Anne’s work has enabled us to reach other parts of our community through her incredible passion and broad body of work. It has been a pleasure for us to support Anne while at the same time, she supports the work we do. Her artistic integrity and creativity to our work has been very uplifting and we look forward to seeing more of her work in months to come.”
The Flow Project will run at Hebden Bridge Town Hall from 13th July to 25th August.