WATER WATER
COLDHARBOUR MILL 17th - 31st Oct 2026
Coldharbour Mill, Fox Gallery, Floor 4
17th – 31st October 2026
A fabulous opportunity to utilise a heritage building, Coldharbour Mill Uffculme, Devon and the ongoing work of environmentally engaging visual arts practitioners.
WATER WATER Explore how water shapes our lives. An opportunity to develop greater community engagement with ongoing creative arts practice, alongside other businesses working with water. A primary exposition experience in a spectacular watery, heritage venue, inviting visitors to develop understanding and valid relationships with water providers, water charities, points of action and consideration through creative exploration. A contemporary exhibition that is both informative and inspiring, including interactive workshops, talks and display. Scroll down for a snapshot of the exposition!
This project is dependent on collaborative working – no funding has to date been secured for this project.
Coldharbour Mill, Fox Gallery, Floor 4
17th – 31st October 2026
TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT, AND FIND OUT MORE BUY THE BOOK click for link: WATER WATER I October 2026
A fabulous opportunity to utilise a heritage building, Coldharbour Mill in Uffculme, Devon, and the ongoing work of environmentally engaging creative practitioners. Together we can generate change. This is a collaborative project; thank you to everyone who helped make this project happen:
Venue WHERE? WHEN?:
Coldharbour Mill
Fox Gallery, Floor 4
17th – 31st October 2026
Uffculme, Collumpton, Devon EX15 3EE, 01884 840960
info@coldharbourmill.org.uk
https://www.coldharbourmill.org.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/coldharbourmill/
Please do visit the exhibition, this digital record is a glimpse of the works available to buy in the exhibition.
COLDHARBOUR MILL: General Admission Opening Times: Tuesday – Saturday Museum & Shop: 11am – 4pm (Last Admissions at 3pm) Grist Mill Café Bar: 10.30am – 2.30pm
BOOK TICKETS HERE
WHO? A material culture collaborative project invited creatives:
Natalie Day Greshna Dibble
Duncan Hopkins
Caroline Lumb
Adam Morrigan
Princetown Press
Caroline Preston
Ruth Helen Smith
heart and wild – poetry
Two Rivers Paper
Rosie and Red Art and Leather
Makers of material culture whose work I admire, respect and want to share. The intention is enabling the voice of the creative, to work collectively and collaboratively to access a wider audience within a heritage venue and in print.
Thanks to Nathalie Assayag Eales for editing and publication support
WATER WATER brings together eco-conscious creative businesses in an interactive arts experience to nurture our relationship with water. Humans need water; it is elemental to our existence, our connection to it is essential. Waterways face great pressures from pollutants, extraction and environmental change, but there is hope. People are waking up to how precious water is. Water Water at Coldharbour Mill, a publicly accessible heritage building in Devon, October 2026: visitors can explore how water shapes our lives, and how creativity can help shape a new life for water.
A call for actions is supported within the exposition through information and displays from, CLICK FOR LINKS: CONNECTING THE CULM, SOUTH WEST WATER, WESTCOUNTRY RIVERS TRUST
WHAT CAN YOU PLEDGE? ADD TO A BOOK OF PROMISES:
ENGAGE – which river catchment do you live near to? There are many positive groups, organisations and charities involved in protecting our waterways. Find out, go out and walk by the water. There are few things more calming and therapeutic than being by water in our beautiful landscapes. From the Thames to the Fowey to the Leith, and multitudinous brooks, streams and tributaries, the United Kingdom has one of the most spectacular coastlines on planet Earth.
This formative WATER WATER project takes place in Uffculme; the River Culm is a beautiful meandering waterway. Be mindful of how you use water; it is precious. Think before flushing anything, reduce unnecessary tap running, fill the machines before switching on the dishwasher or washing machine. Small actions make a difference. Connect with your water supplier – ask questions, be grateful for a tap that delivers clean water, many people do not have this privilege.
Scroll down to see Workshops, Demonstrations and Talks.
THE ART AND ARTISTS:
WATER WATER brings together eco-conscious creative businesses in an interactive arts experience to nurture our relationship with water.
Rosie Burns:
WATER WATER as a project was conceived by Rosie Burns in
August 2025, whilst participating in a Heritage Craft Festival in
the Fox Gallery, Floor 4, Coldharbour Mill, Uffculme, Devon. The fantastic, huge space, filled with daylight, was offered as a spot to share an exhibition. Water is an obvious and timely thematic subject:
Collaboration and collective working create a concrete premise for the futures of our material culture; this project is the beginnings of a Materiality Matters Collective of makers, hopefully the first of many exciting, challenging and thought provoking projects. Rosie’s fascination and love of water is life-long: a swimmer from a young age, preferring the wild – streams, rivers and coastal waters – to indoor pools. PLASTIC BEACH SEA TO SOURCE is an ongoing investigative body of Artwork concerned with water. Rosie has always been interested in using recycled materials in her work, a preference for mount board scraps from picture framers over lino, old, recycled CD cases for dry point in printmaking.
Depictions of water, the bubbles of moving water, its connection to our bodies, the planet, the effect of pollution and potential for recovery of our waterways, form simple and significant images created to inspire understanding and respect for water. Rosie is keen to engage broad audiences with matters of social justice; this work is intriguing, unusual, thought provoking and challenging, however aims to project a broadly appealing, collectable aesthetic, something visually exciting to live with.
Natalie Day
www.nataliedayartist.com
Instagram & Facebook @nataliedayartist
natalie@nataliedayartist.com
Office 1, 3 Bude-Stratton Business Park, Bude EX23 8LY
Natalie Day makes paintings of the land, with the land. Working from the Cornish landscape, she gathers raw pigments – ochres, clays, mineral deposits, chalk and mining remnants – often sourced from places shaped by weather, erosion and time. These materials are then ground, processed and transformed by hand into the very paints she uses, so each work becomes more than an image of place: it is a physical extension of it, carrying the trace of specific sites.
Although not made “about water” in a literal sense, Day’s practice is deeply informed by the elemental forces that water sets in motion. Coastal weathering, shifting tides, rain-soaked moorland, seepage, staining and mineral run-off all leave their mark on Cornwall’s terrain, revealing seams of colour, exposing buried histories, and continually reshaping what appears permanent. Her work is drawn to this threshold between what is held and what is lost: what erodes, what remains, and what resurfaces.
Greshna Dibble
https://www.greshnasartcorner.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/greshnasartcorner
Kentsford@yahoo.co.uk
Portraits of Absence: Water, Ecology, and the Floating Body: The three cyanotype prints—Portrait of Absence: Swimmer 1, 2, and 3—mark a significant evolution in Greshna’s nature-based practice, capturing a deeply personal, ecocentric dialogue between the body and the aqueous environments of Somerset and Devon. For years, her creative momentum has been tethered to water. Whether gliding across the surface on a paddle-board or fully submerged while wild swimming, immersion is not merely a recreational pursuit; it is the vital, somatic foundation of her research. Water is both Greshna’s collaborator and her medium. These life-size prints record a physical presence while speaking eloquently to the liminal space left behind when the body departs the flow.
Duncan Hopkins
https://duncanhopkinsartist.co.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/duncan_hopkins_artist/
https://www.facebook.com/duncanhopkinsartist/
https://www.saatchiart.com/en-gb/duncanhopkins
https://www.artfinder.com/artist/duncan-hopkins/
duncanhopkinsartist@gmail.com
Duncan Hopkins is a landscape painter, who lives and works close to the North Devon and Cornwall coast. His drawings and paintings are carefully observed and improvised studies of the sea, coastline and rural landscapes.
His images are grounded in drawing methods. He works primarily with oils, with support work using charcoal, graphite, pastels and silverpoint. He is interested in the topographical, atmospheric, structural and mathematical nature of the elements of the landscape and sea.
The water and sea paintings have no fixed meaning, but are fluid in potential form and symbolism, reflective of the qualitative and quantitative nature of water – its phenomenology and the ever-changing ecosystems of interdependence and chaos.
Caroline Lumb
https://www.carolinelumb-artist.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/carolinelumb/
Caroline.Lumb@hotmail.co.uk
Reflections in the Water. When all is lost and the water’s surface is disrupted – a moment of calm can bring solace to the viewer. The movement of the water signals the coming of a squall where air has the strength to change the image in front of the eyes. Then in a fleeting moment the air movement has vanished and the water returns to its mirror-like presence.
The body of work shown at this exhibition is based on reflections in water as they show us so much of an ever changing environment that can draw us in and mesmerise the mind. This is a subject that Caroline has often returned to but as she says, seems even more important with today’s concerns about our water. The smallest puddles provide snapshots of reflections and reveals the reality, showing glimpses of our beautiful world, on occasions struggling to be seen, alongside our lack of care for it. It is a wake up cry to look after our water and our world.
Red’s Raw Taw Tan –
Adam Morrigan
https://www.redsrawtawtan.com/
https://www.instagram.com/redsrawtawtan/
Rosie and Red Art and Leather
No2, Nutaberry Yard, East-the-Water,
Bideford Devon EX39 4EA
07866519708
Primitive reflections: ‘A world shaped by water’ is a series of pieces reflecting the relationship we have as a species with this quintessential resource. The earliest alchemy of hide transformation is enhanced by immersion in water. Water is essential to growing any natural fibre. It can be utilised in balance, seen as a gift treated with respect, or not. We evolved from water and thirst, with the need to drink, to eat, to make, to live. Water has always been the most important element. It is the sacred, the heart of all ritual, a nourishing, cleansing archetype, and the most intrinsic part of our everyday life, the washing of the body, the brushing of the teeth, the morning coffee.
Princetown Press
https://www.princetownpress.co.uk
mailto:studio@princetownpress.co.uk
Princetown Press is Emma Hogbin and Jon Palmer. They are Dartmoor-based makers working with letterpress and foraged colour to tell the story of place. The botanical seasons of their home are brought to life in their expressive Wild Colour series. The letterpress printed text anchors the chemical reactions of foraged ink made from oak galls they have gathered within a 5 mile radius of their home.
Water is a key ingredient for their work. The chemical reactions of the botanical pigments need fluid in order to interact. The chemical composition of each ink from each plant is unique to the moment of foraging. Unlike their simplistic lab-grown counterparts, the biochromes of a plant may contain dozens of chemical compounds, each contributing a unique hue that influences the overall colour of the ink. In drought years, the plants will often produce more of the chemical anthocyanin, which helps protect the plant from the damaging effects of the sun. This chemical appears red when the plant is cooked in a high pH water bath.
Caroline Preston
https://www.carolinepreston-artist.com
https://www.instagram.com/carolineprestonorigami/
carolinepreston@outlook.com 07903756733
From sky to sea, earth to ether, Caroline celebrates the celestial and ever-changing cycle of water in our environment. Whether tracing its journey from source to sea, or looking closely at phenomena such as bioluminescence, halos, auroras, whirlpools and pearls, water is woven through both the themes and the making of her work. Water has shaped Caroline’s practice not simply as a subject, but as a way of understanding the natural world.
Constantly changing yet endlessly cyclical, it mirrors the qualities she seeks in her work: resilience and fragility, movement and stillness, transformation and renewal. Through folded paper, pigment and print, she explores these rhythms, allowing materials to behave much like water itself – flowing, settling, reflecting and revealing. She searches high and low, above and below, allowing inspiration to reveal itself through observation, process and making, encouraging audiences to look closer and notice the details that inspire, enrich and sustain us.
Ruth Helen Smith
www.ruthhelensmith.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/ruth.helen.smith/
ruth.helen.smith@outlook.com
Ruth Helen Smith is an artist based in Devon who paints loosely figurative landscapes en plein air. Often painting beside rivers, water is a recurring theme in her work. Though considering the painting process itself as more akin to sculpting thick paint into semi-abstract pieces, Ruth is always looking for the flow of forms and colour in the work.
This focus on an underlying pattern is central to her practice, where the interconnected nature of the cosmos across time and space mirrors the way in which water flows and is in a constant and transformational cycle of gathering, journeying and evaporating, and the life-giving energy it supplies everything in its path.
Michael Hunter
§ poet §
heart and wild
hello@heartandwild.co.uk
07380 550567
@heartandwildpoetry
Michael is a poet and naturalist living in Bideford, North Devon. Raised on the south coast in Rustington, Michael has always felt a close affinity with the sea, rivers and coastal landscapes, and the marine life and human stories that flow towards, from and within them.
Rediscovering a love for writing later in life, and mostly self-taught, Michael has also hosted poetry workshops for The National Trust, National Theatre, National Parks, Beautiful Days Festival, Plough Writers and the Bude Literary and Appledore Book Festivals. adjacent to the Tarka Trail, and is in the early stages of planning for a series of travel, art and poetry projects. Michael’s new illustrated poetry collection ‘salt in our blood’ will be available to purchase during WATER WATER.
Two Rivers Paper
https://www.tworiverspaper.com/the-papermill/
https://www.instagram.com/tworiverspaper/
tworiverspaper@gmail.com
01948641028 Two Rivers Paper
East Quay Arts Centre, Harbour Road,
Watchet, Somerset TA23 0AQ
Two Rivers Paper was formed in 1976, operating in West Somerset since 1988, relocating to Watchet’s, Arts Centre, East Quay in 2021. Now one of the few commercial hand-mills operating in Europe. Our traditional skills have been recognised by The Heritage Crafts organisation as being critically endangered. Without water paper production is not possible, careful management of all materials are an integral part of Two Rivers paper production.
ROSIE AND RED
https://www.rosieandredartandleather.com/
https://linktr.ee/rosieburnsartist
Collaborative work as Rosie and Red Art and Leather has led to a new series of work, Analogue IN Binary Art. Ancient and profane; Red makes parchment from sustainably sourced deer and goat hides. It is one of the earliest surfaces used for
communication; the Dead Sea scrolls and Magna Carta were written on parchment. Rather than using it as a surface to write onto, the parchment was cut into 0s (circles) and 1s (dashes), then arranged to ‘spell’ words, suspended in front of Rosie’s monotype print representations of water.
The copper wire suspends the code; it doesn’t compute an on/ off signal, instead creating a shadow play on the watery surface below. Binary code can be recorded both horizontally and vertically. Parchment was used in many global histories as the earliest form of ‘TV’- parchment puppet shadows used to tell stories.
WORKSHOPS, DEMONSTRATIONS AND TALKS:
Who? | What? | When? | Cost? | |
Rosie Burns | Demo and have a go bubble art card – learn how to depict water using white ink on dark coloured papers – a gentle relaxing formula in drawing. Add to a group piece of the River Culm. | throughout | £5 pp drop in | |
Red | Demo – leather worker at work. | throughout | ||
Red | History of leather Talk 1 hour – meet in Fox Gallery – fibre and the river | Sat 17th Oct 2pm – Fri 23rd 2pm | Suggested £5 donation | |
Greshna Dibble | Geli Plate printing – drop in and have a go, learn one of the simplest forms of printmaking, create you own layered print, based on water to take home. | Wed 23rd Oct and Wed 28th Oct 1130am – 3pm | £15 PP – drop in all materials provided. | |
Caroline Preston | Origami – folded flowers to modular masterpieces. Root yourself in the mindfulness folding of paper, the challenge of origami design, and explore a variety of techniques from creasing to cutting to connecting, then celebrate in the accomplishment of completing your own origami artworks to take home or gift to others | THURSDAY 22ND OCT 12-2PM | £15 PP – drop in all materials provided. | |
Two Rivers – Paper | Paper Making Demo – learn the principle of creating high end artists paper, from a leading heritage craft paper maker from Two Rivers Paper. | Sat 24th Oct 1130-3pm | Beautiful papers available to buy in the space |