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Frozen River - A sculpture commission by the Wordsworth Trust

Frozen River, a sculpture commissioned by the Wordsworth Trust, extends Thompson’s landscape based research.

Thompson was commissioned to make new work for the Trust’s collection addressing the question (identified by the Arts Council England) ‘can contemporary artwork that interprets manuscripts offer new ways of seeing and understanding the manuscript material held by the Wordsworth Trust specifically, and museums in general, widening the accessibility.’ Built from glass, the sculpture is inspired by Wordsworth spending time in Goslar by the frozen river Oker, Germany in late 1798 in one of the coldest months of the century and by thinking of his childhood home. The shape of the sculpture is taken from a map of the river Derwent at Cockermouth just by Wordsworth’s birthplace and where he spent his early years. Extracts of manuscripts from ‘The Prelude’ (on show in the Museum) are held between the layers of glass together with an image of the river Oker - the place where Wordsworth began writing about his childhood. The sculpture brings these elements together and presents a “reflective stream” of ideas built layer upon layer. The sculpture was built at the National Glass Centre using innovative water-jet glass cutting technologies following a computer generated image of the river Derwent at Cockermouth. Images of manuscripts were printed and fused onto the layers of glass together with a tracing of a map of the river Oker at Goslar in Germany. The layers of glass were fire polished in a kiln then bonded with UV setting adhesive. Thompson’s work is now on permanent display at the Wordsworth Trust Museum (since 2012 next to the manuscripts that the work references.