Bringing together poetry, art and environmental history, Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers explores the friendships between artist Barrie Cooke and poets Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and John Montague, alongside their shared fascination with the rivers, lakes and bogs of the UK and Ireland.
The exhibition, curated by Dr Mark Wormald, Fellow in English at Pembroke College and award-winning poet, is currently on show at Cambridge University Library and Pembroke College. It showcases a significant archive of letters, manuscripts, poetry and artworks, including previously unseen and unpublished works by Heaney, Cooke and Hughes.
The identity draws on the elemental qualities of water, landscape and mark-making, creating a visual language that reflects both the beauty of the waterways and the growing urgency surrounding their pollution and degradation.
A restrained but expressive typographic approach is paired with fluid graphic motifs inspired by rivers creating a system that could carry both literary and visual material.
Exhibition graphics, vinyls, labels, signage, digital assets and supporting print materials were designed across both exhibition venues.
