The River Project Exhibition at Dalby Forest

The River Project by Sue Walsh

The theme for the River Project is “Connectivity”. Creating an immersive, experiential series of workshops, engaging local people in the landscape surrounding the River Rye. The Ryevitalise project has encouraged local landowners along the richly varied length of the Rye [and its tributaries] to allow the river to take its own course through their land and encourage the natural riparian habitats to flourish. Workshops took place in Rievaulx at Tylas Farm, in Sproxton at Throstle Nest and at Bonfield Ghyll up on the moors. This allowed the participants to discover places in remote locations and hear from the landowners about their amazing nature friendly farming techniques during the workshops.

Sue Walsh has used the natural resources to help connect individuals and groups within the North York Moors through workshops exploring inter-connectedness, self-awareness, movement, sound exploration, cold-water dips, eco-printing, and creative writing. This exhibition brings together the creative outcomes from these workshops: poetry consolidated from the creative writing and field notes of participants, ecoprinting using the flora surrounding the river, photography by Rachel Rimell and soundscapes created by Cecilia Tyrell

This project was originally commissioned by the Ryevitalise Landscape Partnership & North York Moors National Park

Artist Biographies

Sue Walsh

Sue Walsh is an eco-print artist who lives and works within the Ryedale/Howardian Hills National Landscapes area, with a strong passion for nature and concern for the environment. As an artist Sue aims to help others explore nature and connect to the natural world through creativity and immersion. With a particular interest in helping those who have experienced trauma, Sue has helped to forge paths of healing through engagement with nature using textiles, paper, natural dyes, mark-making, movement, and mindfulness. Other activities include cold water swimming, with a particular emphasis on improving mental and physical health, natural habitat education, conservation, and raising environmental concerns over water quality in rivers. leafsong.co.uk/about

Cecilia Tyrell

Cecilia Tyrell's practice revolves around the physical experience of sound, exploring the environment around us and how we exist within it. She draws upon notions of ecology and psychogeography to illuminate processes and systems that go unnoticed by the human experience, with a particular interest in examining how land around us can hold memory. Audio landscapes are created through sound walking and soundscape design and combining field recordings with found/imagined sounds. ceciliatyrrell.com/about

Rachel Rimell

Rachel Rimell is a photographic artist and filmmaker based in Malton. Her practice spans documentary and conceptual genres exploring themes of identity, transitions and liminal spaces alongside the transient nature of human experience and place in the landscape. Her work is informed by notions of the inner self and outer persona and the invisible threshold between the two and the impact of internal perception, memory and nostalgia and external experience on our human connection to the landscape and the ‘out there’ beyond the confines of the physical body. rachelrimellphotography.co.uk

Exhibition information

Where and when?

This exhibition is available to view in the Forest Arts exhibition space in Low Dalby Courtyard. Situated next to Courtyard Cafe. The exhibition runs from 25 January 2025 until 23 March 2025, open daily from 10am to 4pm.

Cost and booking information

This exhibition is free to all. Parking charges apply. No booking required.