Jillian Edelstein: WATER RATS: Floor 1 and Online
During the Coronavirus lockdown, ten strangers of wildly different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities draw closer as they become a motley crew of outlaws swimming sometimes illegally in London’s wild cold waters. They escape each day as conspirators in the untamed parts of an urban jungle.
"For the Water Rats series I have focused on a group of swimmers (I am one of them) who swim in the wild places in our urban jungle. We continued to do so through the seasons and through Lockdown. The images have centred on a diverse group of Londoners, mixed in ages, careers, interests, who never knew one another before the Covid virus struck. The work includes landscapes, concentrated abstracts of body details, in the landscape, group and individual portraits and through the various weather shifts. Considering the latest trend and ‘fashionability’ of wild swimming, related to the health benefits and the staving off mental deterioration, the interest in wild cold swimming has increased significantly."
