Sophy King, Kurt Hickson and Lorsen Camps were selected for a commission award as part of Worcester OPEN 2023, Climate Change Edition, in celebration of the launch of Meadow Arts current exhibition Watermark, a contemporary art exhibition exploring water, flooding and the climate crisis across venues in Worcester until 3 June 2023.

This week we’ll be focusing on artist Sophy King and her winning piece Witness (2022), currently on display until 30 April 2023 at The Art House, Worcester WR1 3HN.

Worcester OPEN 2023 was a collaboration between  PITT Studio, Meadow Arts, The Art House and University of Worcester School of Arts.

The exhibiting artists were selected by, Anne de Charmant (Artistic Director, Meadow Arts), Hilary Jack (Artist), Pippa Galpin (Artist and Senior Lecturer, University of Worcester), Emalee Beddoes (Independent Curator) and Chloe Roehead-Hughes (Gallery Assistant, PITT Studio). 

You can learn more about King’s work Witness (2022) in this blog post written by the artist.

My practice acknowledges that no place exists or evolves without the species and cultures that inhabit and shape it over time.

Sophy King

I wasn’t sure how to categorise this piece for entry to the Worcester OPEN 2023, Climate Change Edition. This is a print on aluminium, of a photograph, of an object carved during an extreme weather event: the drought of summer 2022. The whole thing is part of an ongoing intervention.

Hunger stones are hydrological landmarks common in Central Europe serving as famine
memorials, embedded into rivers during droughts as a warning to future generations. My carving
acts as a warning of the immediacy of our climate crisis.

It’s a strange sort of an artwork; in an ideal world we would never see it again, it would exist as an
absence; its non-presence would be a cause for celebration. Reflecting our times, however, it is
the first in a proposed series bearing witness to drought and flood levels as extreme weather
becomes normalised. My project aims to take in flood levels also, placing Flood Stones marking
high water levels during flooding events. The Drought Stone ought never to be seen, and a Flood
Stone ought never to be covered. A conceptual line is drawn, and the presence and absence of
water is a part of the work.

I’m a multidisciplinary artist, working with natural and man-made materials, installation,
photography, film and sound. I research narratives of place, time, communities and ecologies.
For several years I have examined moss, fungi, earth, peat, wildfires and water; investigating their
social, economic, and ecological context to expose the nature of our relationship with our
environment. I’m exploring ideas about small-scale urban rewilding at Rogue Artist’s Studios in
Manchester.

My work is entangled with the site-specific, deriving from particular qualities of place. This
develops into narrative, materials, intervention or image. My practice acknowledges that no place
exists or evolves without the species and cultures that inhabit and shape it over time.