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Our CitySalisbury River Park Art
Salisbury River Park
Arts Programme
The
Programme
The Salisbury River Park is an important regeneration project for the city which creates a new green corridor of public open space along the river Avon as well as delivering essential flood risk mitigation.
Throughout the River Park you’ll find unique, site-specific artworks that have been designed and created to help Salisbury residents and visitors alike connect with the river Avon. The artworks have been inspired by its special biodiversity and help make a visit to the Park an educational, playful and enjoyable experience by introducing another layer of interest.
The Salisbury River Park Arts Programme has been curated by public art commissioning organisation Studio Response.
Here you can discover more about the art around the River Park and what has inspired the artists, makers and illustrators who made it.
Fred Fieber
Coach Park Mural
Salisbury-based artist Fred Fieber brings the fauna and flora of the River Park into the heart of the city’s coach park, welcoming and encouraging people to explore the River Park for themselves.
Fred’s canvas is the toilet block which in its original state, did not provide an attractive or welcoming sight for people arriving at Salisbury via coach, or for people choosing to walk through the coach park when navigating the city.
Fred’s vibrant mural makes an instant impression, greatly improving the appearance of the building and creating a sense of arrival. It also helps signpost people to the adjacent River Park.
How many of the species portrayed in the mural do you recognise?
Photo credit: Michael Illas Photography
Francesca Mclean
Flora and Fauna Illustrations
Francesca Mclean is an illustrator and designer based near Salisbury with a love for the natural world that is apparent in much of her work. You’ll find Francesca’s work throughout the River Park as her specially commissioned illustrations feature on the numerous boards installed to provide information and help you find your way.
Francesca’s illustrations bring to life some of the River Park’s mammals, fish, insects, trees and vegetation and help us to see in detail the natural world that surrounds us.
Jane Edden
Fleeting
Jane Edden’s sculpture –Fleeting– for the Pocket Park near Mill Stream Approach is inspired by the fleeting glimpse of wings that we experience when trying to observe insects in flight. They are there … then gone … flitting about. Insects are almost impossible to see in detail when in flight so the beautiful structures of their wings are lost to us.
Jane’s sculpture is informed by her investigations into the detailed vascular structures of the wings of the Green Drake Mayfly and the Common Darter Dragonfly that are found near the chalk streams of the River Avon. Scaling up the wings gives observers the chance to see their intricate natural forms.
As you walk around the sculpture there are certain places where the images will resolve to show a complete pair of wings for each insect, but never at the same time? Can you find these four places that bring the wings to life?
Fleeting has been laser cut from 8mm weathering steel which over time will gain a complex rust coloured protective patina.
Photo credit: Michael Illas Photography
Zac Newham
Orchard Seating and Willow Bulb
Artist Zac Newham lives close to the River Park, and his artwork can be found in several places there.
During the design process, Zac spoke to local residents and groups such as DIGS (Disability Interest Group Salisbury) and Exeter House School and ran model making workshops at South Wilts Grammar School to understand how his functional artworks could meet the needs of a wide variety of people.
Zac’s fish inspired picnic benches and tables are a fun meeting place at Ashley Road Open Space, and the nearby willow bulb sculpture provides a low-sensory space where people can rest and calmly connect with nature. Zac will continue to shape and weave this living sculpture so that it keeps its form and develops more rigidity over time.
Zac Newham
River of Life / Interactive Play Boards / Colour Palette
Zac has also worked closely with Green Play Project, the designers of the new play park at Ashley Road Open Space. Zac spent time running art and ecology workshops with pupils from Sarum St Paul’s Primary School and Exeter House School to find out how they would like to see the natural world incorporated into the play area.
With South Wilts Grammar School Zac led a riverbank walk to study the colours found in this natural environment, which were then recreated in watercolour and pencils by the students to create a beautiful colour palette. The palette is a wonderful co-created legacy that can be used in future arts projects across the River Park and further afield in the city.
Zac’s artworks for the new play area include nature inspired play boards which incorporate an interactive, fun element and a striking, large-scale installation called the River of Life which enlivens and enhances the rear of the multi-use games area.
Tech Moon
Central Car Park Mural
A mural by artist Tech Moon certainly brings the wow factor to the Central Car Park! Tech Moon’s striking artwork transforms the five walls of the toilet block, with each wall giving pride of place to a native species – Atlantic Salmon, Kingfisher, European Otter, Grey Heron, Banded Demoiselle – as well as name-checking each of the five rivers that run through the city.
The designs are edged in a dramatic marble and gold filigree frame, and even within this the flora represented is the water crowfoot which can be found within the River Park.
The artwork’s prominent position encourages people to not only visit the city centre but the River Park too.
Photo credit: Michael Illas Photography
Karen Wimhurst
Becoming River
Karen, a South West based clarinettist and composer, has created a series of 8 short musical pieces inspired by the Salisbury River Park and the neighbouring Avon Valley Nature Reserve.
Initial ideas for these compositions began on a wet dawn walk, recording on site, as well as underwater recordings made by Adrian Newton in the River Park. These varied tracks feature a number of musicians;
Ed Bersey – percussion; Julia Blinko – soprano; Emily Burridge – cello; Paul Hutchinson – accordion; Ricky Romain – sitar; Robin Walter – guitar; Karen Wimhurst – vocals, clarinets, piano.
A musical representation of this unique part of Salisbury, this music is a wonderful way to experience life on, in and around the River Avon.
Thanks to Amy-Jane Beer ‘The Flow’, Will Scott, Andy Wallis, Keri Jones. Recorded and mastered at Sylvafield Studios.
Image credit: Curious Origins
Music of the River Park
You can listen to the recordings here
Wetlands
Avon Valley Nature Reserve
“April 2024 and a solo dawn chorus splosh in the Avon Valley Nature Reserve as the adjacent wildlife corridor and wetland restoration in the Salisbury River Park is on its way. Thrillingly, I am accompanied by a Cetti’s Warbler.”
Sky River
Salisbury River Avon underwater recordings, dragonfly wings
“Atmospheric rivers, sky flows, are a reminder that a river is not a bounded entity, a ribbon of water in a channel. Rivers are simply the places where water is most visible and alive. There is a river flowing through you now.” – Amy-Jane Beer, The Flow.
They Are Busy
Salisbury River Avon underwater recordings
“Listening in underwater….. there’s a whole scene going on as we two legs stroll by along the banks. Water beetles, nibbling fish, invertebrates and many unknowns all getting on with life.”
Night River
Salisbury River Avon underwater recordings Daubenton and Pipistrelle bats
“As dusk draws in, other creatures inhabit the river on wing. Agile, skimming the water, flitting, twisting, turning, half glimpsed in the night.”
Warble
Avon Valley Nature Reserve, reed warbler, reed bunting, sedge warbler
“Swing number with lead singers from the reeds. They are waiting in the wings to make their home in Salisbury River Park’s new wetlands. Listen out for their songs.”
Flood
Salisbury residents recently flooded; floodwaters from Salisbury, Nepal, Bangkok
“The Salisbury River Park scheme is striving to make Salisbury more resilient to floodwaters. The failure to tackle climate change means people worldwide are increasingly suffering the devastating destruction of floods. The sitar scale which Ricky improvises in is Raga Miyan ki malhar, associated with the rainy season in Northern India.”
Spiral River
River Avon and chalk stream recordings
“Gazing into the river and watching the ripples, the curls, the vortexes, we see the forces which have created our living world. We see the same spirals in our bones, ears, fingertips, organs, all drawn by the same rhythm of flow.”
The Salmon’s Leap
Salisbury River Avon underwater recordings; bells of St Thomas
“This is new dance, ready for the time when everyone gathers once a year in Salisbury to join hands and welcome the Atlantic Salmon back to their ancestral breeding grounds in the Avon.”