River Effra Fleet - Clay, Community, Memory: Emma Fenelon

The majority of this installation is outside and can be viewed whenever the cemetery is open.
As you walk through the famous 'Tite Arch' on your right in front of our new Visitor Centre follow the winding River Effra on the River Effra Fleet. Can you find the figure you made?

With Portico Gallery, I established a pottery studio and worked with local clay shaped by the River Effra. As an artist with a background in psychotherapy, I’m drawn to the ways we hold experience and meaning through making, and how shared creative spaces can bring this to life.
Portico Gallery itself is housed in West Norwood’s original public hall—a space where local communities have gathered for 150 years. It has long offered room for entertainment, creativity, and refuge, even serving as a place of safety when the Effra flooded. The gallery continues that legacy today as a site of collective expression and connection.
In this spirit, I created a community clay project centred around a fleet of boats—vessels shaped to carry stories, memory, and meaning. Each boat was offered to the community to fill with their own creations: tiny figures, animals, and symbols of personal significance. Together, these boats became a collective journey, reflecting how we travel through life side by side, each carrying and supporting one another. Boats are ancient symbols of passage, resilience, and shared direction. In shaping and filling them together, we honoured the quiet strength of community—how we hold space for each other, make room for difference, and navigate the tides of life as one.

The majority of this installation is located outside and can be viewed whenever the cemetery is open. The section inside can only be viewed when the Visitor Centre is open. Next dates the Visitor Centre is open are: 11am-6pm Friday 6, Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 June.

Information on all our Installations and Exhibitions can be found here