Surface Tension by Alegria Repila Smith

For nearly 50 years, the canal has been silent. Once thronged with thousands of boats carrying cargo from the heart of Yorkshire to the global trading port in Liverpool, it now lies dormant, a dark shadow of its former self. Purposeless, peculiar and stagnant, the canal is one of many strange relics scattered across the city, harking back to an age full of the wealth brought on by the frenetic industry and commerce that characterised this city during the Industrial Revolution. But water remembers. Clogged with the detritus of long-forgotten lives, loves, secrets and scars, this murky underworld is brimming over with ghosts desperate to sing to the surface. 

We might do well to listen to these watery spirits- Alegria Repila Smith certainly thinks so. She has been dredging this body of water for several months, and her discoveries attempt to give voice to the whispers of the waterways that vein our city. Each artifact is a ghost of its former self, mottled and rotted and bloated and forgotten below the waterline. The veil of water separating past and present, living and dead, remembered and forgotten has become muddied: thin. 

In ‘Surface Tension’, drowned artifacts are brought to life in a sculptural and sound installation and performance which gives these mysterious objects a chance to speak and sing. Repila Smith acts as translator, guide and ghost, diving beneath the surface and battling her way back up again to give voice to these sunken stories.  

This presentation is part of the Accelerator Bursary 2025, funded by Leeds Art Fund and delivered in partnership by Leeds Art Gallery and Assembly House.