Reverence for the Waterways

Reverence for the Waterways

A communal meditation and environmental performance

lead by artist Andrew Whittle. In collaboration with Beach Guardian CIC, Clean Ocean Sailing and Lime House Yoga.

Reverence for the Waterways is a unique six-hour performance and communal environmental meditation exploring the hidden world of microplastic pollution. Led by artist Andrew Whittle in collaboration with Beach Guardian and Lime House Yoga, this event invites volunteer participants to take part in the slow, careful act of separating microplastics from organic matter collected from the banks of the River Fal.

Immerse yourself in an extended environmental meditation practice while engaging with the seemingly impossible labour of retrieving microplastics from the environment. Through careful filtration and sorting, the act of environmental remediation becomes both a contemplative ritual and a collective performance. The event will also be documented through film and photography as part of the artistic process, capturing this collective act of attention and environmental care.

🪸 Why this work?

Through his work with Beach Guardian, Andrew Whittle has spent over seven years confronting the pervasive issue of plastic pollution along coastlines and waterways. During this time, he has come to recognise that the core problem lies not only in the production of plastic but in the difficulty of extracting it once it has fragmented and entered ecological systems.

Reverence for the Waterways marks the first time that microplastics collected from the river environment will be separated from organic material en masse within a healing, meditative setting. The performance transforms the slow, meticulous act of filtration into a space of reflection, care, and communal responsibility.

🌱 The Wider Context

As we move further into the Anthropocene – the geological age shaped by human activity – plastic pollution represents one of the most pervasive and enduring traces of our presence. Microplastics are now found in oceans, rivers, soil, air, and increasingly within our own bodies.

This performance explores the interconnectedness of the outer environment and the inner body. The act of filtering plastics from river sediment mirrors the biological processes through which our own bodies attempt to process and filter these same materials.

✨ Questions the Work Asks

In this shared space of attention, the work asks participants to reflect on:

• the immense time required to undo environmental damage
• the invisible labour of ecological care
• the relationship between pollution and personal wellbeing
• and the question that inevitably arises: who is responsible?

By measuring and quantifying the time required to retrieve microplastics by hand, Reverence for the Waterways makes visible the scale of a global problem while offering a moment of communal reflection, cleansing, and care.

🐚 Art as Ecological Reflection

The performance becomes both an act of mourning for the remnants of the Anthropocene and a gesture toward healing – acknowledging that the work of restoration must take place both within the environment and within ourselves.