Where Birds Won’t Fly (2022 - present)

The landscape surrounding the Staffordshire Moorlands is defined by its folklore. Through her project Where Birds Won’t Fly, visual artist, Ruby Nixon, explores the history and mythology surrounding the ancient tales of a mermaid that lives beneath the surface of two pools in the Staffordshire Moorlands. 

The folklore rumours that the pools, six miles apart, are connected by an underwater tunnel. Cattle refuse to drink from them and birds will not fly over. The stories of how the mermaid ended up here vary from a sailor bringing her in-land from the ocean, to an accused witch being drowned here and subsequently haunting the waters. Regardless of how her fate sealed her within these depths, one theme remains consistent in these narratives: a historical dehumanization of the female presence. 

Nixon’s practice documents myths of the landscape entwined with theories of the other, using a multitude of mediums including analogue film, physical printing, archives and digital processes. The photobook blurs the borders between truth and fiction, playing with fragmented narratives that investigate misogyny and abstract feminism.