fæthm (fathom), will be open from Thursday 13 – Sunday 16 March 2025 and will debut BIDE – a public art installation in the River Don at Kelham Island weir which features a traditional Yorkshire Coble rowing boat that reacts to live data from the river.
BIDE by Professor David Cotterrell, is a visual representation of the vulnerability of the river. The boat will flood with water and bail itself out as it responds to inputs such as rainfall, from the river.
The exhibition within the museum will feature art installations from Sheffield Hallam artist-researchers. Joanna Rucklidge’s prints and drawings will explore the juxtaposition of the river’s wildlife with the littered plastic on the riverbank.
Joanne Lee will present visual essays that consider the cyclical processes of the river throughout its history and future using found objects from the Don.
Photography from Dr Rose Butler captures silt, fig leaves, hemlock, and remnants of a rave along the river’s edge. The work reflects on the industrial revolution, migration and the stories of how the fig trees came to thrive alongside the Don.
There will also be a live citizen laboratory, where visitors of all ages can learn about microbiology and chemistry by testing samples from Sheffield’s rivers, using cutting-edge equipment used by our Biomolecular Sciences Research Centre to research the health of our rivers.
Amy Carter Gordon, curator of the exhibition from Sheffield Hallam University’s Research and Innovation Services, said: “I chose faethm in an attempt to understand the interconnected and complex relationships we have with the River Don. This journey explores what it means to cite the river as a collaborative partner or co-curator, and therefore to question our ecological empathy.
“The artists in the programme utilise research to delve into different aspects of our entangled relationships with the Don and the local environment –a boat in apparent distress at the weir, or disposed litter and found objects are printed and repurposed into installations. These nuanced perspectives invite us to consider the many ways we relate to connect with the river.”
Wild Medicine x CiviCast, the National Civic Impact Accelerator will be creating a special ambient podcast to be listened to alongside the exhibition to encourage a sense of connectedness to the River Don through spoken word, field recordings and organic textures.
The exhibition is part of a wider collaboration between Sheffield Hallam University and the River Dôn Project. The Project is reconsidering our relationship with the environment through art projects, citizen science, technological tools and public engagement, to explore the future rights of nature in South Yorkshire.It seeks to demonstrate how we can see and sense into the complex ecosystems and relationships that make up the water catchments that we are all a part of.
The River Dôn Project will be launching their engagement platform at the exhibition. An interactive, digital interface, designed to make visible and better understand our complex relationships with nature.
Alban Krashi, from The River Dôn Project, said: "The current path we are on has taken us past seven of the nine planetary boundaries that sustain all life. We are all collectively responsible for and victims of this cycle of abuse; we are at war with ourselves and all future generations of all living things". We at the RDP hope that the development of this integrated platform can present a unique opportunity to explore and understand our relationships with nature so that we might have the chance to catalyse a new type of identity as ecological citizens."
"We see the River Don and its surrounding bio-region as an ecological citizen, interacting with human citizens whose growing awareness of the needs and wants of the river can inform and enhance their own 'ecological citizenship'. The catchment area is made up of thousands of interwoven and interdependent relationships. If we can see and understand those relationships better, we think that this could inform how citizens, communities and institutions collectively steward, value and change the choices we make together towards a liveable future.
The word fathom is taken from the Old English fæthm, meaning "outstretched arms." The Old English and modern English noun also refer to a unit of length used to measure the depth of water. The sense of intellectual depth comes from that meaning — to understand or fathom something thoroughly is "to get to the bottom of it."
