The act of walking is not purely a physical motion, it evokes both sensory and emotional responses of the moment, embedded within memory. Walking has always been an unconscious part of my practice, a reflective process, reading and memorising features on familiar routes. Covid 19 lockdown daily walks from my home in Mid-Devon, followed regular tracks and paths, networking a landscape of known landmarks. I recorded day-to-day variations, often reflected by the weather or the seasons. A ploughed field, grazing livestock, hedgerows, the clanging of a farm gate, the buzzing of telephone cables, strung from telegraph poles stretching into the distance. Sights, sounds and smells, creating a personal experience.
Rebecca Solnit suggests repetition can be cognitive, ‘as though thoughts and ideas were indeed fixed objects in a landscape one need only know how to travel through’ (Solnit R, 2002 p. 77).
I documented these daily walks through a series of 60-second films, including, snapshot recordings of sights and sounds on my walks. walk the line an animated version of drawings from a sketchbook, drawn as I walked.
The digital interpretation, working within a 60-second time frame, was intended to capture the essence and immediacy of the experience, arousing the curiosity of the viewer. I have the memory of the physical walk and the process of making the films. It’s for the viewer to interpret the lived experience as a metaphor of their own.
Rebecca Solnit questions our contemporary relationship with walking, stating that it is perceived to negotiate between a series of interiors. The time in-between is a ‘waste’, filled with gadgets (Solnit R, 2002, p. xiii). She believes human beings need to reassess time and space, allow time to walk and reflect, stating that the invasion of the digital world designed to make our lives more efficient, has in effect reduced our free time.
Employing cartography as a further response to lockdown walks, I produced a map of the routes and paths I had traversed, my home being the central point. A hexagon encompasses the perimeter of my walks. A symbol often found in pre 19th Century farm buildings, that connects to folklore, associated with warding off unpredictability in agricultural communities. The wall hanging on recycled canvas, uses a mixture of local earth, raw pigments, collage, and text. I have introduced topographical features and landmarks I noted on the paths and trails I followed.
During a field trip to northern England in October 2021, I revisited 2 childhood homes. In Macclesfield I walked a remembered route around the old mill town documenting changes that had taken place. In Derbyshire I walked to a site I had drawn from over 40 years ago. I wanted to combine a narrative of the past interwoven with the present. Picking up the thread of the Lockdown walks I transposed maps of the three locations onto sheets of tracing paper. The transparancy when the maps are overlayed suggest an echo of the past perceivable through the veils of the present. I carried out further experiments onto stained and starched fabric, the accentuated contours and raw materiality of the cloth suggests the geography of the locations.
Working on a larger scale I experiment with shaping and installing the layers. The cotton thread indicates paths and trails, weaving in and out of each landscape, fusing memory. Footpaths overgrown or long forgotten, walking randomly into unknown or forbidden territory, losing one’s way. Is this a metaphor for our thoughts and feelings in these deeply troubling times? My investigations continue.
‘each walk moves through space like a thread through fabric, sewing it together into a continuous experience.’(Solnit R, 2002 p.xv)
Reference: Solnit R, (2002) Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Verso, UK
Sara Bor 1st Year Student, Professional Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London.
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