Have completed my first map! It shows the whole city of Newport. When printed it will be large, over a meter square. The River Usk bisects the town and enters the Bristol channel. On the west bank of the River is the district of Pill and this has special significance for me. Pill is the docks area of the city. Over the years many immigrants have found a home here – my grandfather was one. In this one small district there are in excess of thirty languages spoken. Some of there communities are very old, there has been a Somali community here for over a hundred years. More recently there have been arrivals from Eastern Europe. So in a sense this map charts changes in those who have come to live here. The map is unlabeled, reduced to a series of unmarked flowing lines, I have tried to give a pattern like quality to the map. I imagined the mystery and draw of the land, this sense of coming to a new place seeing it for the first time, something quite different to that you know. Full of unknown symbols. The natural shape of the river/land seems to communicate this, the course of the river is sinuous and opens funnel like to the Bristol channel, the river seems to draw you in towards the land, it seems to suggest a new life to come. I can only imagine it must be the strongest of motivations that brings a person here to start a new life. I see this map as a type of landscape revealing the form of the land and water. The course the river takes is very attractive, which is ironic in a way, when viewed close to, the exposed river mud banks are quite ugly.
