तमस (Tamasa)

Tamasa, a project undertaken with Territorial Agency from 2017–18, took as its focus the sprawling urban zone of the River Thames and its estuary, the material effects of which bloom deep into the North Sea.

The project argued that this zone is morphologically complex. Hosting both the military and the logistics industry, it is cut up, compartmentalised, and closed off. Yet despite its being a frontier of England and the UK — now more so than ever — the estuary’s inhabitants are disconnected from the centres of decision-making upstream. In naming each of its parts, and marking the material flux throughout it, the project aimed to address the estuary’s darkness, or ‘tamasa’ — Sanskrit for gloom, and possible root of the name Thames.