Artist: Pip Woolf

Elemental forces: 1 Water

How do we show water without water?
Its force, movement, qualities, stories, value?

My interest in water as a subject of artistic inspiration comes from a dogged determination to live more sensitively in my environment. This new work was made in response to the fulfilment of a dream to install a hydro electric scheme in my home and work place in the Brecon Beacons and a desire to let raw materials create their own marks.

Our hydro scheme took more than two years to install and involved physical and administrative work on my part as well that of my partner and our direct community of friends and neighbours. The intensity of this project led me to produce a series of artists books made with and about water power as well as a series of water studies.

The twenty books which comprise Water Power~ Ynni Dŵr are all made from one large drawing which was then broken into twenty equal pieces before having text and images sewn, in sections, into its folds. The individual books have their own bookends made from a single water worn lump of sandstone. Each book is unique in itself and yet part of a single whole. I have effectively created a community of ownership as I am gifting 15 of the books to those individuals and organisations who were directly involved in the project and of the remaining 5, only three are available to sell.

During 2008 I also spent a week on the Llŷn peninsula drawing and collecting earth colours, manganese dioxide and iron oxides. The visit developed some of the water inspired images for this exhibition.

Most of the work in this show has been made with plant and earth colours which are then worked with water itself under pressure.

Pip Woolf
February 2009