When Anne Waggot Knott discovered that many of Manchester’s residents don’t know where their drinking water comes from, she set about making work that laid bare the origins of the water that nourishes the city. In this blog, Anne shares the background to the creation of her artwork ‘Small Water’, which features in the See Here Now exhibition.
Cumbria’s water supply feeds and nourishes not only the immediate fells and surrounding region but great swathes of urban north west England. This may seem like a simple statement, but many people do not know about the origins of their drinking water, or what the journey entails.
The commoditisation of our water and its transport out of Cumbria to slake the thirst of the city starts to represent a very real threat to the human and the more-than-human.
Some background : following stories of water
I’m a rural contemporary artist and geographer based in the borderlands of Cumbria and southern Scotland. During 2023 I undertook a slow travel residency with Proforma and Rogue Studios in Manchester, examining how water and people move through the city.
Following stories of water gave me a geographical and conceptual anchor, allowing me to find areas of geographical and cultural porosity and use them to build new creative networks. I explored my own on/off relationship with Manchester over the years, and the journeys of other incomers and creatives.
I lived in the city briefly in the late 1990s, soon after the Arndale bombing. Manchester was in shock, undergoing a self-reckoning and subsequent seismic urban redevelopment. My entry point to the city back then was Owen’s Park in Fallowfield, a student hall of residence now earmarked for demolition. Adorning the lower part of the famed Owens Park tower block was Cosmos, a relief mural by a fellow incomer, Jewish American sculptor, Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe. I lived on the 9th floor and walked past Cunliffe’s artwork every day.
At the start of my residency, I discovered another prominent work by Cunliffe in Manchester: the relief sculpture on the Heaton Park Pumping Station. This is also a relevant entry point to the city, this time for the more-than-human: it’s where Manchester’s drinking water arrives in a long pipeline all the way from Haweswater in the Lake District.
The water and I had followed almost the same trajectory down from the rural northwest, both welcomed at our entry points by incomer and artist, Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe. These deliciously parallel journeys gave me a unique and personal premise through which to re-explore the city: by following the flows of water and people.
… deliciously parallel journeys gave me a unique and personal premise through which to re-explore Manchester: by following the flows of water and people.
The Installation
Small Water is an installation made up of bottles of water, grit, gravel and stones. It is one of several works I produced during my residency, prompted by the discovery that many of Manchester’s residents don’t know where their drinking water comes from, don’t trust their drinking water, or neglect to consider its origins. It decided to make work that laid bare the origins of the water that nourishes the city.
I made the creative pilgrimage from Manchester back to Haweswater, hiking up to Small Water, one of the tarns that feeds the reservoir. I collected water, together with the grit and stones that filter it in its natural environment, retracing my steps to the city with the precious cargo. The act of bottling it felt almost ritualistic, and reinforced to me how we constantly commoditise and commercialise nature.
My installation is arranged like a font; bottles placed on stones high up in the middle of a tall plinth then fanning out haphazardly amongst the grit and gravel, radiating from the centre. Each bottle is full of water with grit from the tarn bed, demonstrating the varied geology surrounding the water source itself.
The radial structure of the work embodies a geographical decentralisation of the city. Rather than placing the city at the centre of things with people and water flowing inwards, as we tend to do, it places the water at the centre with people and creativity flowing outwards from the source of nourishment. A geographical flip. That which nourishes the city often comes from far away.
When the work was originally shown in Manchester I distributed bottles of the water in handmade limited-edition boxes tied with pink twine: ‘Nature’ packaged for human need.
My Manchester residency was funded by Arts Council England via Proforma and Longsight Art Space. I was resident at Rogue Studios.
To find out more about Anne Waggot Knott, see her profile here.
