Walking to work

From January-May 2015 I was released from teaching and administration to focus on research. In my sabbatical application I stated my interest in how art, primarily location specific sculpture and drawing, articulates and occupies space; its presence and separateness from other entities; how it touches and inhabits the fabric of our environment and constructs the space around itself. I proposed to do this through considering latent histories of sites and materials in the process of researching and making by visiting specific sites to find physical and intellectual substance for my work.

What developed from the time was the intermingling of going places and experiencing the environment that made me realise other things. I walked in familiar places and thought about what it was to be there. Time was available to not just make things but to consider a more ontological approach to how I work which is naturally intertwined with where and how I live.

Tim Ingold speaks of going for a walk; you get ready, put on your specialist gear, prepared for the terrain but anything can happen. We need to find a correspondence with the environment, to think of longing, a sense that you long for places, things or situations but you don’t know what they are.

I propose to present this 20-minute paper as an illustrated, myth-busting guide to this engagement with the artistic process entitled ‘Walking to Work’.