Sea Like a Mirror is an ambitious national partnership programme, commissioned to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), inspired by the profound legacy of their life-saving work and the special status its volunteer crews occupy in the collective consciousness of our island nation.
At the heart of the programme is a newly commissioned artwork, White Horses, by Ivan Morison, from the collaborative practice of Heather Peak and Ivan Morison, exploring our complex relationship with the sea through its innate duality as a place of both wonder and peril, and the myriad roles it holds for coastal communities.
Combining sculpture, 16mm film and music, this travelling work will be created through shadowing RNLI crew and local people with a deep connection to the water. White Horses presents a multifaceted portrait of the sea and Britain’s coastal towns, bringing together six diverse locations, each linked by the lifeboat station at the centre of their community.
Produced through a series of visits to lifeboat stations and seaside towns around the British coastline – Whitstable, Cromer, Weston-super-Mare, Cleethorpes, Barrow-in-Furness, and Gravesend – the work will be unveiled in spring 2025 and return to each location as part of a national tour.
In each setting, the work will be accompanied by a series of projects by local artists in collaboration with the area’s community. In dialogue with Ivan’s central artwork, these local works will open conversations on mental health and wellbeing, the changing landscapes and identities of seaside towns, the spiritual role the water holds for communities, and the differing relationships to the sea in these coastal settings.
Sea Like a Mirror is a partnership project led by Cement Fields, with Art Gene, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Create North East Lincolnshire working with East Marsh United, and Super Culture. Delivered in collaboration with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI), and supported with public funding from Arts Council England.
Ivan Morison (b.1974) has established an ambitious practice that transcends the divisions between art, architecture, theatre and social practice; questioning what it means to be an artist in the 21st Century. His primary preoccupation has always been how we navigate catastrophe and the violence of change – from the wider collective view down to how individuals deal with moments of personal calamity. He is co-director of Studio Morison along with Heather Peak, an artist-led creative practice which supports and realises their ideas and the people they work with. Central to this work is the involvement with spaces of human coexistence and with the communities that occupy or may gather there. They categorise their work as a situated practice constructed from layers of social sculpture and sculptural space.
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