A visual arts exhibition about water, flooding and climate change will be on display at venues across Worcester for five months.

Watermark, which is a partnership-based project in venues across the city, will open on January 28 until June 3.

Visual arts charity Meadow Arts in partnership with five Worcester organisations, will explore water and flooding through a multi-site exhibition across the city.

Watermark will reveal how artists have responded to the element of water, how they have picked the urgent concerns of rising levels, flooding, drought, and invite visitors to reflect on their own relationship with the element.

Worcestershire has a long history with flooding - from its main rivers, smaller watercourses, ditches and increasingly, from surface water.

Worcester itself has always been subjected to flooding from the Severn and has coped with the occurrence in various ways over the centuries.

The exhibition will take place across five venues – Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery, The Hive, St.Swithun’s, The Art House and the terraces of the University of Worcester’s City Campus.

A showcase of artworks made by local children who have experienced flooding themselves and engaged with the exhibition will be on show at Worcester Cathedral during July.

Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery will show impactful drawings, sculpture and film looking at how art can communicate the climate crisis.

This will include Gabriella Hirst’s film Force Majeure showing the sheer force of the elements battling human endeavour; striking works on paper by Naiza Khan, Sally Payen, Tania Kovats, and a series of underwater photographs by Emma Critchley explore, through the element of water, our experience and understanding of the natural world.

Inside The Hive, artist Carolyn Black will showcase (until February 28) prints and drawings exploring the Severn basin, alongside artefacts from WAAS (Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service) uncovered by during flood alleviation schemes in Worcestershire.

The area immediately surrounding The Hive contains a series of dug out basins designed to alleviate flooding.

Hilary Jack’s installation Deluge, will see large LED signs mounted just above the flood line. Its scrolling text will share age-old flood stories and myths from various cultures, as well as data on recent flooding events from across the globe.

In the grounds of The University of Worcester, which were landscaped to resist water erosion, Daniel Pryde-Jarman’s monumental sculptures Potemkin and Flood will point to a recent history of military settlements abandoned after severe flash floods in the Californian desert.

Three captivating films will be on show in the atmospheric setting of St Swithun’s a listed deconsecrated church and recently opened cultural venue for Worcester.

In Frontiers artist Emma Critchley explores land sovereignty, following China pursuing a programme of land reclamation in the South China Sea; a film by Simon Faithfull of a figure engaged in a futile quest against rising waters, and Suky Best’s mesmerising collaged animation The Sea House shows a historic building slowly consumed by the sea.

During January and February, The Art House, home of the University’s School of Arts will showcase the 2023 Worcester OPEN, an exhibition of works by artists from across the UK concerned with flooding and climate change (until February 23).

Anne de Charmant, artistic director of Meadow Arts, said: “This exhibition is dedicated to those around the world who are affected by flooding and rising sea levels, and shows how contemporary art can open channels of communications on the issue.”

Watermark is accompanied by an exciting education and events programme, including a series of artist talks exploring the unique capacity arts and culture have to inform conversations about our changing climate.

Full information on the Watermark programme and artists’ works can be found on the Meadow Arts website: https://meadowarts.org/event/watermark/