Deluge, 2025 

 

Deluge was a collaboration between three artists and three saltmarsh habitats (UK/Netherlands) exploring tidal wetland ecosystems across the sites of Aberlady, East Lothian, Scotland; Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England; Schiermonikoog, The Wadden Sea, Netherlands.

It began in 2022 with a relay-style travelling residency, during which three artists took turns visiting and spending time in each of the saltmarshes. From this process, a series of works was developed and produced.

A series of public engagement events took place across the three years, with the artists leading walks and workshops within the three habitats. These events explored alternative outdoor advertising, the shapes of the land, and drawing – all of which has fed into each of the artists research.

The Deluge exhibition, held in February 2025 at Art Gene’s main gallery, marked the culmination of the three year project.

Deluge took its name from a landscape constantly under the threat of water. Flooded twice a day by salt or brackish water, the saltmarsh is a dynamic habitat that helps to protect our shorelines from erosion and slows down flooding.

“In past centuries, marshes were generally considered useless land which needed to be eliminated or transformed to become useful to people. The term that has been used is “reclamation,” which suggests taking something back, yet what people were actually doing was just “claiming” the wetlands for their own purposes. Wetlands have been recklessly filled to expand land for agricultural use or urban development throughout history. This reflects the prevailing value on human dominion over nature; taming the land for human purposes was considered righteous behaviour until recently.” 1

1 Judith S Weis & Carol A Butler, (Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History, 2009)

 

Deluge embraced the ecological value of these rare, often overlooked habitats. Each artist told a story of their distinct engagements with these fragile landscapes and surrounding communities, of their journeys between each locality – crossing land, coast, and sea – and of their varied methods of enquiry.

The saltmarsh is considered as:

• A wasteland, a space historically without use;
• A landscape initially underwhelming in its features, in which human presence has been largely absent and reimagined into a realm of shapes, speculation, and imagination; and
• A land required to continually adapt to provide shelter, emblematic of our resilience at a time of increasing climate change.

As a whole, the exhibition reflected on how to value, engage with, and care for these precious landscapes—largely forgotten and unnoticed, yet vital transitional zones between land and sea.

Click here to view the complete list of works featured in the exhibition.

Deluge was initiated by curator Rosy Naylor of Art Walk Projects (Edinburgh) and created in partnership with Art Gene (Barrow-in-Furness) and curator Anna-Rosja Haveman (Art & Environment, University of Groningen, Netherlands).

The project was supported by funding from Creative Scotland and Arts Council England. The Deluge exhibition was curated by Art Gene, in partnership with Art Walk Projects.

With thanks to:

Green Shores Saltmarsh Restoration Project, University of St Andrews
National Trust – Sandscale Haws National Nature Reserve
Bethan Pettitt, Clinton Rimmer, and all Art Gene staff
All the volunteers and participants for their contributions throughout the project

Participating artists

Oscar Van Heek

Edinburgh, Scotland

Biography

Oscar Van Heek (b. 1965, Weesp, The Netherlands) is an Edinburgh based fine art photographer, film maker and writer. He has written and directed the film Dark Water a unique experimental collaboration with Scottish Opera and composer Malcolm Lindsay, exploring new ways to create narrative structure. Dark Water opened at Palm Springs festival.

This was followed by The Iron Harvest, a video installation and series of fine art prints, detailing the detonation of live World War One ammunition on the former battle grounds of Ypres. It was nominated for the Scottish Landscape Awards and shown at the Edinburgh City Art Centre 2024, at Sonica Glasgow 2022, and at Somerset House in London. It was nominated for the Sony world Photography awards 2020.

In 2023 Oscar had a major exhibition at the Scottish Poetry Library entitled Waterfalls, a unique collaboration with authors and poets, including: Kathleen Jamie; Jen Hadfield; and Cal Flyn.Current work includes The Wastelands and Color Flora.

Oscar regularly shows at Royal Scottish Academy’s Annual Exhibition.

Linde Ex

Groningen, Netherlands

Biography

Linde Ex (b. 1983, Nijmegen, The Netherlands) is a visual artist, artistic researcher and teacher. She works as an artistic PhD candidate at the University of Groningen and the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen, the Netherlands. She is also a core lecturer at the Fine Art and Design Master MAPs (Materials in Artistic Practices) Frank Mohr Institute, Groningen.

Linde is drawn to topics that whisper and murmur. Entities like flying insects, saltmarshes, peat and bristle worms. Entities that tend to be neglected by humans or have an understated beauty. Her artistic research consists of attempts to relate and interact with these others. This results in a variety of collaborations (with natural scientists, farmers, sorcerers, dancers, insects, etc. and outcomes. Linde makes installations, drawings, books and videos.

In her artistic PhD, Linde develops distinct artistic ways to connect the research to broader environmental processes and challenges. She has published articles in the international journals Journal of Artistic Research (JAR) and Forum+. Linde was awarded the George Verberg Grant (2020) and the Noordenaars Young Talent Artist in Space Grant (2021). Her work has been showcased in leading arts institutions and platforms.

Dana Olărescu

Barrow-in-Furness & London, England

Biography

 Dana Olărescu (b. 1985, România) is a London-based socially engaged artist working at the intersection of installation, performance, and social design, whose practice challenges minority exclusion and environmental injustice. Through participatory methodologies that democratise access to art and knowledge, she aims to give under-served migrant groups and people habitually excluded from decision-making processes the agency to become active co-producers of culture.

Her work has been showcased by leading arts institutions and platforms, including Tate Modern, the London Short Film Festival, the National Maritime Museum, the Low Carbon Design Institute, Art Gene, ArtHouse Jersey, x-church, in-situ, Pier Projects, Incheon Art Platform (South Korea), and Tanzhaus NRW (Germany).

For Deluge 2025, Art Walk Projects commissioned writer Tom Jeffreys to write a piece responding to the project and its themes. He spoke with each of the artists at length about their practices, experiences, perspectives, and individual works. Click here to read Between Land and Sea by Tom Jeffreys.

Tom Jeffreys is a writer who lives in Edinburgh. His books include: Walking: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2024); To an island in a loch on an island in a loch, with Kirsty Badenoch (Mouldy Books, 2023); The White Birch: a Russian Reflection (Little, Brown, 2021); and Signal Failure: London to Birmingham, HS2 on Foot (Influx Press, 2017).