Turning the Tide
17-20 September
8pm - 10:30pm Daily
We are delighted to share with you Turning the Tide, a new site-specific film installation by Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass, presented as part of Totally Thames festival 2026.
Projected onto the iconic disused columns of Blackfriars Railway Bridge, Turning the Tide transforms a unique Thames landmark into a striking outdoor artwork. The installation will be on view from 17-20 September 2026, each evening from 8:00pm to 10:30pm, and can be viewed from Blackfriars Bridge, SE1.
Turning the Tide by Catherine Yass, in partnership with Graeae and commissioned by Thames Festival Trust in collaboration with the City of London Culture Team. Turning the Tide is supported by the City Corporation's Community Infrastructure Levy Neighbourhood Fund and uses public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Turning the Tide has been awarded the prestigious Art Explora - Académie des beaux-arts European Award, the leading European Award championing new dialogues between the arts and audiences.
The red columns of the old Blackfriars Railway Bridge have stood in the Thames majestic and resilient ever since 1864. I have always wanted to stand on one of the columns, like Saint Simeon the Stylite who lived on a column for 38 years. Working with young deaf and disabled people gave me the idea to project videos of them onto the bridge columns as a way of increasing their visibility in public life. The projections will be free and seen from the Thames Path and Blackfriars Road Bridge for four nights during the Thames Festival 2026. My daughter has cerebral palsy and this has shown me that, like her, many disabled people don’t feel confident in public places. She is part of Graeae Theatre Young Company and it is exciting that we are now working together to create videos of the young people that will be projected onto the bridge columns, with them performing in response to texts commissioned from disabled writers. The team is made up of disabled and abled professionals including deaf photographer Becky Bailey and deaf creative captioner Ben Glover, alongside theatre and dance photographer Hugo Glendinning who has regularly filmed Candoco Dance Company, audio describer Lewis Gibson and sound designer Simon Keep.
The projections form the basis for workshops with six disability youth and arts organisations. Three of them have made work prior to the projections that will be shown in a free month-long riverside exhibition during Thames Festival in September 2026.
Turning the Tide will be developed into a stand-alone film which will include the projections on the bridge columns and the rehearsals where the young people will be seen developing their performances through detailed filming of their gestures, expressions and interactions. The film will bring in footage of the columns in different weathers and tides, as well as exploring captioning and audio description as creative devices.
My hope is that Turning the Tide will go some way towards turning the tide on attitudes to disability, giving the young people confidence to show who they are.
Thank you to:
Thames Festival (Adrian Evans, Helen Galliano, Jonathan Bartlett, Annabel Taylor-Munt, Darren Smallman, and Claudia Vyvyan)
Zaynab Bunsie
Graeae Theatre Young Company
RSBC
Aldgate School
Saint Bartholomew Hospital
Vital Arts
Hugo Glendinning - video camera
Becky Bailey - stills camera
Sebastian Buerkner - editor and colourist
Greg Jones - stills retouching
Ben Glover - captioner
Miss Jacqui (deputy artistic director of Graeae) - audio description
Simon Holkham - audio poems
Simon Keep - sound designer
QED - Paul Wigfield
Taziker - David Shrader
Helen Marriage
Christopher and Enna Thea Kul-Want
Electroprops
Sandra Valencia
Meej Douglas
Stella Ioannou
Harshita Patel
