Sea Like a Mirror
Sea Like a Mirror, a major touring programme commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), will tour to six lifeboat station towns across England throughout May and June this year. Opening in Whitstable over the May bank holiday weekend (2-5 May) the work will then tour to Cromer (15-18 May), Barrow-in-Furness (22-25 May), Weston-super-Mare (5-8 June), Cleethorpes (12-15 June) before returning to North Kent’s Gravesend for its final dates (21-22 June).
At the heart of Sea Like a Mirror, is a newly commissioned artwork, White Horses, by Ivan Morison, from the collaborative practice of Heather Peak and Ivan Morison. Commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), it is inspired by the profound legacy of their life-saving work and the special status its volunteer crews occupy in the collective consciousness of our island nation.
This travelling work, housed within a unique, custom-made sculptural tent will be installed on the seafront, immersing audiences in the stories of RNLI crew and local people from around our coastline. Within this structure, Ivan’s new work, White Horses, will be screened using 16mm projection and accompanied by live music from local musicians, presenting a multifaceted portrait of the sea and the nation’s coastal towns, bringing together six diverse locations, each linked by the lifeboat station at the centre of their community.
Produced through a series of visits to lifeboat stations and seaside towns around the coastline, and in close collaboration with those who hold a deep connection to the water, the work explores the sea’s innate duality as a place of wonder and peril, and the myriad roles it plays for coastal communities.
“When I began this wintertime survey of the coast, I was looking for storms, and people who face that storm, people who have found a place in the service of the sea. I have met fishermen of lobsters and crab, farmers of oysters, I have seen where we build our nation’s nuclear submarines, and understood the changing economies of these coastal towns, I have been out to wind farms and watched blade technicians at work, I have darted between huge tankers with a sixth-generation skipper on his tug, and I have swam with those that swim and been saved by those that save.
Yes I have found waves, sometimes there have been storms, but more than that I think I have found a changing but thriving coast populated by people with a sparkle in their eyes, doing remarkable things with an understated competence, and a lightness and joy. It’s this everyday preparedness, the ability to perform in extreme conditions, that I think I am looking for, and that perhaps the final work may illustrate. This is not a comprehensive survey, just an impression, the film an evocation of the spirit of these places and people.” – Ivan Morison
In each setting, White Horses will be accompanied by a series of commissions by local artists, made in collaboration with the area’s community in dialogue with Ivan’s central artwork.
In Weston-super-Mare, White Horses will be presented alongside Promenade, a weekender event which explores place, environment and the natural world through multidisciplinary contemporary arts and socially engaged practice. The weekender will include five new early career micro-commissions for artists in the area, aged 18-30, as well as a 16mm film commission, coastal poetry, live music, performance, and site-specific artworks along the Promenade.
Sea Like a Mirror is a partnership project led by Cement Fields, with Art Gene, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, North East Lincolnshire Council & East Marsh United, and Super Culture. With thanks to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Supported with public funding from Arts Council England. Presented in Gravesend for Estuary 2025 with Estuary Festival.
Read the latest press release here
Artist bio:
Ivan Morison (b.1974) has established an ambitious practice that transcends the divisions between art, architecture, theatre and social practice; questioning what it means to be an artist in the 21st Century. His primary preoccupation has always been how we navigate catastrophe and the violence of change – from the wider collective view down to how individuals deal with moments of personal calamity. He is co-director of Studio Morison along with Heather Peak, an artist-led creative practice which supports and realises their ideas and the people they work with. Central to this work is the involvement with spaces of human coexistence and with the communities that occupy or may gather there. They categorise their work as a situated practice constructed from layers of social sculpture and sculptural space.