Border and distribution are contrary to one another. Border is fixed whilst distribution implies a certain fluidity; rivers embody the intentions of both. Rivers form geographical borders within the landscape. They impose a physical barrier and a pair of oppositions, one side of the river and the other. Rivers are also vehicles for distribution; their continuous and permeable nature allows for the dispersal of living and non-living things. The river should be seen as a living thing in itself, a growing, complex system that responds and adapts to change. The body of the river mitigates borders as a permeable medium in flux, but it is the river system and lay of the land that creates a border in our landscape through manipulating the shape of water. When we think of the history of the Thames, for example, we tend to think of its interaction with humans, the building of the city around the river and the artefacts that lay below, when in fact each molecule of water that makes up the body of the Thames has a much more substantial history behind it, the water is older than the city. The river is ever-changing, we can only speculate where each molecule has been in the 5 billion years it’s been on earth and where it might have been even before that. The transient nature of water means that water has the ability to defy borders; the water within a river is part of a global collaboration that settles only briefly in one place. It is much more vast and organic than we initially imagined. The shifting river is the artist, but any photograph or video captured of the river only speaks for the moment the image was taken, never to occur again, capturing merely the water molecules at surface level. Taking a snapshot image therefore seems futile. To fully capture a moment in the continuous flow of the river, the river must be encapsulated itself and a new border imposed. To compartmentalise something so vast and ever changing is intriguing and allows us to see deeper below the surface. A glass sphere holds the river water, illustrative of glass found on the river bank, products of the river’s distribution, manipulated and sanded-down by the circulatory system of the river. The sphere holds within it a fragment of the river in time; a true portrait of the river and the vast history it holds. This receptacle exists in contrast to the filmed piece which shows the organic and ever-shifting river in motion. The relationship of the exhibited compartmentalised river, and the moving river on film allows for a direct comparison between the two, highlighting the ambiguous nature of rivers as borders which are ever-changing.