The first public event for Come Hell or High Water was on the winter solstice, 2019. The invitation read ‘join our pocket of resistance on the banks of the River Thames by Canary Wharf, a place that exists between water and land, private and public space, wealth and poverty, past and present, and an unknowable future. Where the tide slowly recedes, and a small foreshore is temporarily exposed, there will be a series of monthly performances.’

I activated Come Hell or High Water with the artist Hayley Newman, the human rights lawyer and artist Sarah Andrew and the musician and director of Three Colt Gallery, Georgina Pringle with Phoebe Patey-Ferguson subsequently joining.  I programmed a year of monthly events on Limehouse foreshore.

We continued throughout 2020, keeping a spirited physical presence on the foreshore on all the intended yearlong dates, inspired, rather than deterred, by observing varying government restrictions due to the Covid pandemic.

The April 2020 invitation stated ‘Artist are also key workers, they find other kinds of locks and open them. This Come Hell or High Water event upholds Imagination as an act of revolution, of connection, of recognition, of vision, of expansion, of happening and of strength.’ A send-out of works relating to CHOHW, made by artists programmed pre-Covid, also went out each month.

The final event for Come Hell or High Water was on the winter solstice, 2020 at high tide.  It was an incantation, written by Sarah Andrew, called out, at the moment of the solstice, from people spread far apart around the wall of the foreshore and on out into the estuary and the oceans and lands beyond.

Artists (in chronological order) who contributed to Come Hell or High Water include:

The Neo-Naturists, Harriet Latham, Robin Bale, Sarah Andrew, Hayley Newman, Sinead & Hugh O’Donnell, Ansuman Biswas, Hugo Danino, Whiskey Chow, Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, Filippos Tsitsopoulos, Bob Parks and No Name Now Collective, The Animal Choir, Conny Prantera, Stephen Shiell, Hannah White, Eddie Sherwood, Sabrina Fuller, Sarah Kent, Miyako Narita, Demet Dayanch, Nicola Woodham, Robin Bale, Danielle Imara, Soren James, Sally Ann Labern, Lyndsey Lupe, Lou Barnell, Julie Pickard, Rachel Santoro, Jade Wilford, Harriet Cowen, Stephan Barrett, Isabella Bock, Cliff Hammett, John Wild, Naomi Siderfin, Yulia Tsvetkova, Nicole Garneau, Alicia Radage, Mirei Yazawa, Sarah Woolfenden, The Rag Tag Shanty Crew, Annie Moreton, Daniel Gosling, Richard Layzell, Dave Stephens, Roger Turner, Phil Minton, Fran Cottell, Shaun Caton, Jacky Lansley, Fergus Earley, Moa Johansson, William Raban, Cora Andrew, Rachel Gomme, Elspeth Owen and Max Weaver ( The Parabolas), Luna Montenegro and Adrian Fisher, Peter Cusack, TJB,  Ron Haselden,  Brian Catling, Rod Melvin, Mary Lemley, Amy Sharrocks, Richard Wilson, Seth Guy, Jade Blackstock, Yol, Rachel Cohen,  Bronwen Buckeridge, Z’EV, Nina Sobell, Yolande Brener, Nicol Parkinson, Vivienne Ezughe  Moa Johanssen, Stephen Watts, Alethea Raban, Iain Sinclair, Fergus Kelly, Sarah Sparkes, Anne Robinson, Mark Pearce, Charlie Fox, J D Swann,
 Mark Anderson, Selina Bonelli, Stella Pearce, Aaron McPeake, Nigel Rolfe, Blanc Sceol, Jefford Horrigan, Deej Fabyc,  Karen Goonewardene, Tony Grisoni, Poppy Jackson, Rob La Frenais, Rebecca Weeks, Henry Collins, Andrew Warrington, Jasper Llewellyn.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/blog/come-hell-or-high-water-performances-on-the-thames-shore-welcome-the-summer-solstice

Photographs were taken throughout by David Hoffman

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