Dirty Water: London’s Low Tide

Dirty Water is a free limited-edition artwork by artist Tania Kovats, distributed at low tide at 20 locations on the River Thames on Thursday 21 September, 2017.

"Dear Reader, I am an old river. I want to tell you some things while I can. There is a current running through this city that has to speak… I am going to share things that are difficult for me to tell, things that trouble me from my lowest tides, and some of the things I think about to lift my spirits. You decide if you can trust me."
Extract from Dirty Water, London’s Low Tide

At low tide on Thursday 21 September 6,000 copies of a limited-edition artwork by internationally renowned artist Tania Kovats were given away at twenty locations from east to west along the River Thames. Produced in newspaper format, Dirty Water, London’s Low Tide is a collection of drawings, images, secret musings and writings edited by old River Thames herself, offered to those traversing the river at low tide on the morning of the Autumn Equinox. Dirty Water was also part of Totally Thames, the annual 30-day season of events celebrating the River Thames.

Dirty Water is the inaugural annual artist-in-residence commission for Art on the Tideway, one of the UK’s most ambitious new public art programmes which launches fifty artworks by leading and emerging contemporary artists over the next five years. On completion the artworks will trace the 25km route of the new Thames Tideway Tunnel, a new ‘super sewer’ that will help tackle sewage overflows into the River Thames.