Commune is designed to bring like-minded people together. Each month we sit down in conversation with someone who inspires us to share their practice.
This August, we commune with ecological artist Anna Murray.
In conversation we speak with her about the inspiration behind her new platform Well Space, which bridges the immersive arts with water consciousness, and its opening exhibition at Bo Lee Gallery in Bruton, The Waters Are Speaking…
Anna Murray (@anna_spirals) is an ecological artist based in Bruton. After working as co-founder of the London-based creative studio Patternity, she presents us with a personal body of work, Well Space, a platform that culminates her exploration of patterns, ritual, and most importantly water, across the past two decades.
We spent the day with Anna to hear about her practice, the things that inspire her, to see the artworks she has created and learn more about her upcoming exhibition. We spoke at her home and later she took us on a walk to one of her favourite spots along the River Brue.
Where did the vision for Well Space come from? Were there any particular wells that inspired this work?
I've been visiting ancient wells, springs and rivers in and around Somerset, and around the world, for the last ten years, but probably my favourites, and the ones that have really inspired the work, are the wells in Somerset.
St Aldhelm’s in Doulting, is a beautiful well about ten minutes away from my home, it is so ancient, with an incredible network of waterways all around it, not just the physical well that’s man-made that I love, but also all the springs and waterways around it. You feel like you’re in this amazing utopia.
Glastonbury Spring has also been somewhere that I have just loved to sit and tune into water as this powerful, beautiful force. It’s so ceremonial, you feel like you’re entering a completely different time.
My interest is looking at the well as a symbol for these times, as a gathering place, a place for community, a space to tend to nature — and water being a sentient, alive, relational force, not something that's just a resource that we just plunder and take, but something that we can be in relationship with, be in dialogue with.
Do you feel that the ley lines of Somerset hold a significance, is there a unique energy the water holds here?
Certainly, I definitely feel it. The river that runs at the end of my garden comes from the source of the River Brue, which flows to Glastonbury — from the source at Alfred's Tower and Stourhead, right down through to Glastonbury. And Glastonbury, many people say, is currently the energetic heart centre of the world at this time, and that's a powerful thing; to live next to something that flows right to that heart centre. So, a lot of my practice is going down to the river here, making offerings, tuning into that mystery.
These lines speak to a sense of a creative pattern, a geometric system that connects the whole world. I feel very connected to my heart when I go to places like Glastonbury — I love the idea that it is the heart of the world.
Would you tell us about your practices of making offerings and water rituals?
For me it's quite an intuitive thing. For a long time, I've been going up to the source of the River Brue up at Stourhead, and I'll take maybe flowers, seeds, might be chocolate; something that feels lovely and beautiful, something that would be nice to be offered. I go up there and just sit and really listen; that's where I've done a lot of my documentation of the sound, of the ripples, the light, and textures on the water.
I think it can feel like ritual has to be complicated, and actually it can be quite simple, just going somewhere and sitting.
When I go to these places and I really slow down, and switch off my phone, tune into the energy of being in that natural place, that place that for many, many, many years has been somewhere sacred. You really feel a sense of something deeper, and the sense of connecting to time in a different way.
What has been the process of creating The Waters Are Speaking… ?
It's come about through an ongoing collaboration with people based in Somerset — I don't think the piece could have happened without such open, collaborative hearts, and how many creative people there are here, especially a few key people:
Paul Webb, a meditation teacher, and a beekeeper too; he has a lot of experience bringing groups together into a deep state of meditation. We’ve worked on the script for the exhibition’s guided meditation people take part in, with a ritual at the end.
Cal Bain, a visual artist and film animator. He has taken this archive of years of my visual documentation of water and projection-mapped it onto the structure people will come into for the installation. His skills have been incredible, piecing it together, creating a whole narrative around these different moving images of water.
David Morgan has woven the sound together, we’ve sat down for many hours, and he’s taken excerpts of my decades of recordings and sounds from all around the world and designed an hour long audio soundtrack to take people on a deep contemplative journey.
Kitten Grayson, a floral artist and gardener who I’ve collaborated with on the central water altar, where during the ritual, people will make their prayers and intentions. It’ll be filled with local spring water from three springs across Somerset.
And Mark Griffths, a super talented maker and designer who lives nearby in Box, he’s taken the vision and helped make the piece site specific to the gallery. Meetings have involved digging around in piles of limestones and finding just the right tree stumps for the ritual seating.
But really, water is the main collaborator. I like to think the piece is water taking centre stage, and we, as artists and creatives, have gathered around it, trying to help people think more about water in these challenging times and see it as the sacred and essential element it is.
How do you feel the space of Bo Lee gallery interacts with the central installation:
It's been such an honour to have this first installation at Bo Lee. It's such a beautiful space, and I really feel it has that feeling of the sacred, because it was a church.
What I love is that there’s a feeling that creativity is a kind of sacred act, something we can all come together with.
With my piece being about water, there are echoes of how you always have a font in a church which is very symbolic, water as the source of life. That cleansing, rebirthing water plays in biblical texts, and right back to pagan and Celtic traditions — that unifying element, so powerful, beautiful, and transformative.
It feels very significant to have the first show (of what I hope will be many in sacred sites and galleries around the world) there, housed with the backdrop of the symbols of the church. People walking in will feel that sense of honouring — walking into something special and sacred. That's a real, exciting aspect of it — it's just such a powerful space.
What response do you hope The Waters Are Speaking invites from its participants?
I hope what it activates is a hopeful feeling, there is so much beauty. We live in a world where it can be hard to see, with the destruction and chaos and breakdown of so many systems, but amidst that, there's still so much beauty.
We just need to look at the local river, see the light, it’s like angels. So, as well as the beauty, this piece for me is also about, almost, honouring a sense of grief in the world, of the degradation of water. Water is a mirror for what's happening to our culture, it’s a direct mirror.
We're polluting the waters, we're polluting ourselves, it's all one and part of the same thing. And yet there's also so much beauty — how can we hold space for both, in these times?
For me beauty can be a powerful portal into hope, activating a felt sense — if I want to participate, to care more for the water, how can I do that? That's another aspect of this work: I don’t want it to end in the exhibition, for it to continue — we're planning a programme of events to follow, so people can connect more with water, learn about their local waterways, volunteer, take part in a ceremony, go on that next journey if they want to. Like a ripple effect.
Would you be able to share with us what some of those events may be?
Part of the programme that's going to surround Well Space is a series of walks where we go to ancient wells and springs, taking a small group in honouring of the water. But also, to talk about the role of creativity today, what we're navigating as creatives, the questions that come up and how we can support each other through that questioning.
In Vedic traditions, water is the seat of creative power and energy, so working with that. Asking how we can activate it in our own lives and creativity and support each other. The physical act of walking helps us come together, connect, sink into a slower, deeper rhythm, working with the metaphor of water as flow. Where do we flow, where are we stuck, how do we meander, how do we come together in confluence and co-creation?
I'm looking forward to bringing those together, hosting with different collaborators, helping people learn the myths, histories, and lore of the wells.
Our thanks to Anna Murray for welcoming us into her world. The Waters Are Speaking… is an invitation to listen, to offer, and to reconnect with the wisdom of the waters around us. To conclude in Anna’s words, "water is the great connector."
Book tickets for The Waters Are Speaking… here
Learn more about Well Space at https://www.wellspace.earth/ or through Instagram @wellspace.earth