'Overflow'
Floodlights Festival,
Hull Absolutely Cultured 2021
Overflow was commissioned as part of the FloodLights Festival — a celebration of light, place, and community, exploring the ways water shapes the lives and identities of the people of Hull.
Working in partnership with Living With Water, Yorkshire Water, and the University of Hull, we responded to the urgent and ongoing dialogue around climate, flooding, and our collective relationship with the seas. These themes felt particularly resonant in Hull — a city whose story is inseparable from the tides that surround it.
Our inspiration began with the striking architecture of Trinity House Academy, but quickly deepened into something more layered. The school’s rich history as a nautical institution, steeped in maritime tradition and deeply entwined with Hull’s relationship to the sea, became the heart of the work.
We spent time at the school, speaking with students and teachers — asking what water, and more profoundly, what the sea means to them: in memory, in the present, and in their imagined futures.
Together with electronic musician and sound artist Leigh Toro, we created an immersive audiovisual journey — diving into the deep with glowing bioluminescent forms, echoing lost treasures, and the toll of the school’s famous ship’s bell. The final piece emerged as a vivid, swirling collision of light and sound — shaped by the voices and stories of Trinity House Academy’s students.
Overflow is a meditation on memory, identity, and our enduring, evolving bond with water — both as a threat and a source of life, myth, and imagination.
Technical Advisor: Adam Long
Technical assistance: Dan Gray (Graymatter video)
2021
