Moving Forwards

There have been substantial developments in my work over the summer. A transition, perhaps.

My thinking about walking continues, however there has been a re-focussing, taking me from wider views to details; from landscapes to objects.

Forward Footing is a new project by Miles and Dacombe. Developing from my work in collaboration with Carole Miles, we are now creating a Landscape Intervention Kit - a means of interacting with your landscape creatively by introducing new elements into it. We'll be trialling elements of this idea over the next few months.

Intervention as part of Refractal, Kings Wood, Corby, Northamptonshire, 2014

This is a development from a lot of work that I've been involved in for a few years now.  At first, for me, walking as an artist was about choice, freedom of movement to explore a space (Paths of Desire project). Then it became about being a human in a landscape, how we sense and respond to what's around us, how it affects us and how we affect it; how we interpret our landscapes and how we map them (Myth Maps project, Map of the River Nene, Dukes Wood project etc). This brought me to become interested in intervening in landscapes, creating temporary interventions and re-interpretations of our surroundings (A Walk Through the Underworld, Refractal etc).

One of Miles and Dacombe's own interventions is represented in The Art of Walking exhibition, currently on at The Museum in the Park in Stroud, Gloucestershire. A diverse collection of artists responding to walking are shown. You can read the catalogue here.

Bones of the Chillingham cattle, 2013

More significantly, I have been developing a project with the University of Leicester School of Archaeology. This has culminated in a proposed project I have called The Reliquary Project, which looks at archaeological animal bone finds and their significance within different contexts.

How has a project about bones come out of a walking practice? I have tried to explain some of this in an article I've written for Unofficial Britain, you can read it here: Found Things.

This could open up a whole new world for me, and nicely consolidate some of my ideas about the layers of history and time periods that exist within our landscapes, with ideas about objects. It would also give me the chance to make some objects of my own. I wonder how this will change my practice further.