arts Article On Watery Borders, Borderlands, and Tania Kovats’ Head to Mouth Ysanne Holt Department of Arts, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK;
[email protected] Received: 30 June 2019; Accepted: 13 August 2019; Published: 20 August 2019 Abstract: With a relational view of landscapes and natural environments as continuously “in process” and formed from the over-layered and interdependent connections between nature and culture, the human and the non-human, this paper considers some recent practices by artists who have worked in the largely rural border region of Northern England and Southern Scotland. Expanding from a focus on the artist Tania Kovats’ 2019 Berwick Visual Arts exhibition, Head to Mouth, and a wider frame of non-anthropocentric ecological thought in relation to the visual arts, it explores the significance of diverse creative engagements with water, here with the River Tweed, and their potential value in a current cross-border context of social and environmental challenges and concern. Keywords: borderlands; ecological thinking; River Tweed; Tania Kovats; contemporary arts and environment; water; Anglo-Scottish borders 1. Introduction The UK border region of Northern England and Southern Scotland is sparsely populated and often perceived and experienced as marginal and remote, with associations either of peace and tranquility, or of isolation and peripherality. Amidst social and political anxieties wrought by referenda on Scottish Independence (2014) and Brexit (2016), and the environmental problems that face this primarily rural, cross-border location overall, the significance of its shared resources, practices, and identities and the value in this context of recent forms of visual arts practice are important considerations.