Confluence in Time – Rachel Morrell and Walter Lewis
7 January – 12 April 2026

Rachel Morrell, painter and textile artist, and Walter Lewis, photographer, explore the contrast between the industrial heritage of the Leeds Canal Basin in the 1800’s and today’s regeneration as a Northern technical and financial hub. Their collaboration is a contemporary representation of the changes in its culture and use.

The Canal Basin in Leeds is where the Leeds Liverpool Canal joins the Aire Navigation, providing a waterway across Northern England linking the Mersey to the Humber. As such it was a key source of prosperity for Leeds and West Yorkshire. It is also where the railway entered the City Centre set on the Dark Arches over the Canal and Aire and started the demise of the waterways as a trading route. Today neither railway nor canal represent that industrial wealth, but the area has been rebuilt as a hub of contemporary industry – office-based work in media, finance, law and IT. The area has become a fluid and dynamic convergence of new and old.

Further, this convergence of different eras is matched by the Basin, both historically and today, being a hub of social interaction, whether it be the bustling of bargees unloading and loading or the modern-day digital office workers and occasionally, tourists.