Amy Sharrocks is a film maker, sculptor and live artist based in London. She is a recipient of a current Artsadmin Bursary.
News and projects
SWIm (July 2007)
SWIm was an open invitation, all access swim across London, taking place on July 12, 2007 from Tooting Bec Lido to Hampstead Heath Ponds. SWIm was one of a series of works looking at people and our relationship with water in an urban setting. It is an attempt to forge a new understanding of ourselves and our vital resources, creating a new way to span our Capital within a large group collective.
Some of our drivers were in Islington on the 10th July and saw Amy Sharrocks’ work. They were really taken aback. They’d not seen anything like it before so I read up on the event in the Independent. I wanted to let you know how impressed our drivers were. I’m not putting the fellas down when I say that modern art is not normally the focus of their conversation. Thought I’d let you know I’ve written a blog article about the piece on our website. I hope you don’t mind but we try to keep it updated with what different drivers are doing around London. If you’re interested the blog article is called Man and Van Islington art work
Amy, hello
A ‘comment’, or in fact several little-ish ones – as well as a request! …as I would have loved to have been in the SWIm with you at the Thames Festival last weekend, but the tides of people were against me!
All day on Saturday I was being swamped by the successive waves of people who flooded ‘the Feast on the Bridge’, two bridges and few piers away (I was one of Clare Patey’s team involved in the build-up and build until 5.30AM and then, from 8.30AM until late, very much on the bridgehead, helping to keep happy the ‘river gods’ and whoever of their ‘weekend worshippers’ was there on the day and on our bridge!)
I then missed your ‘little pool of London’ a second day running when I necessarily had to ‘go with the flow’ and head upriver to join other artist friends who were having their watery way with the world around Gabriel’s Wharf and Oxo Tower.
But with my feet now back on the ground, and both metaphorcially and physically on ‘dry land’ – under my Thameside home/office table! – I thought that I should at least try to catch up with via email/your blog, not least because, as a compulsive pedestrian and riverbank resident, I wanted to say – as I wanted to do in person, a week ago! – that I so agree that it’s the water and walkways (and how we choose to discover and use them) that define and enrich life in this city for each of us.
And so, despite not having ‘dipped my toe in the water’ at the Thames Festival, I would love to be part of your ‘aquatics team’ during that Olympic summer, and in this way the artistic ‘ripple effect’ from the main MacSport event a little further east and south! Tower Bridge here we come??
Jane
“Pursuing her on-going passion for London’s famous river and challenging its official health & safety status, Amy Sharrocks set up a paddling pool in Pottersfields Park, and invited people to roll up their trousers and wade through the city’s water, inviting them to sign up for a swim of x100 people across the Pool of London underneath Tower Bridge, being researched by the artist, to take place in 2012.” Laura, Home Live Art
i also been in islington and i was amazed with the work was done over the years