Simon Read

London

Simon Read is a visual artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Middlesex University. His practice relating directly to his current coastal and estuarine work, started in 1993 through the offer of a residency upon the Upper Thames leading in 1996 to the public commissioned work for the Thames Barrier: “A Profile of the River Thames from Thames Head to Sea Reach”. He became involved in estuary environments after he lost his studio on the Thames in a warehouse fire in 1979, bought a cargo barge in Holland and brought it back to Woodbridge on the River Deben in Suffolk, where he has been based ever since. His studio practice at that time was based around photography, custom-building cameras for specific projects, but, living afloat, he quickly became engrossed by the experience of continual flux that is fundamental to tidal environments and in a short time he became more interested in exploring beyond the appearance of estuary and coastal systems to gain insight into their behaviour. An opportunity for a more material level of engagement arose in 1997 with the need for public consultation over estuary strategies and shoreline management plans on the Suffolk Coast. This gave scope to apply knowledge acquired through previous projects and to ground it in a specific tidal environment. It meant that he had to become conversant with the terms of reference of marine habitat and flood risk management and to be willing to move his studio practice sideways to one configured in terms of coastal discourse. One means by which he could work directly with tidal systems was mapping the changing environment to understand it more closely and, through this, feel able to represent it in a public context. In 2009, he undertook the first saltmarsh management project at Sutton on the River Deben; intended primarily as a means by which the local community could become physically engaged with the principles of estuary management, it swiftly developed into a more far-reaching operation. Due to increased sensitivity to the manifestations of climate change, the stability of the intertidal zone is receiving increased attention, as a result of which what started as a small local debate on a rural Suffolk river has become a case study in a wider and more pressing debate. As a result, this enquiry has become a part of a wider interdisciplinary conversation where art, the need to foster a higher level of community responsibility, the academic and policy sectors are all equal partners. Simon Read has exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally and continues to do so but over recent years his practice has become sublimated into the certainty that the current environmental dilemma is as much a cultural as it is a logistical challenge. Over the last ten years he has participated in a succession of interdisciplinary academic research partnerships, of which the most recent have been: Hydrocitizenship 2014-2017, CoastWEB 2017-2020, Deben Soundings 2020-2022.