Walking with Artists creating new Encounters

As I think about the Edinburgh walk I am reflecting on this line from Larry Eigner:

“a poem can be like walking down a street and noticing things, extending itself without obscurity or too much effort”

Larry Eigner’s writing made me reflect on the fact that much of the work that takes place in my studio seems to centre around the walk as a process for researching, reading and making rather than on the poem and the words of the poem. There is a lot of work that is happening ‘without too much effort’ that relates in one way and another to the walk.

This is a drawing I made this week in an effort to try to make connections with the walking process, making knots and drawing.
As those of you who read my blog might be aware on my walks I make ropes by hand in my studio and ask participants who walk with me to make knots in ropes to document the experience.

The drawing is something I want to do more of and it has been reaffirmed by my reading of Confabulations by John Berger.This reading came about as I prepare for another related walk in august with The Walking with The Waste Land group and of course there are cross-overs or maybe,confabulations.

As I read,there is so much that is pertinent in Berger’s writing to what I am engaged with, Berger writes:

“During the last week I’ve been drawing, mostly flowers, motivated by a curiosity which has little to do with either botany or aesthetics…..Is it possible to ‘read’ natural appearances as texts?…It is a gestural exercise, whose aim is to respond to different rhythms and forms of energy, which I like to imagine as texts from a language that has not been given to us to read”

and so, I keep looking carefully at ropes and knots.

As we are preparing for the #ThreadandWord walk in Edinburgh, I was delighted to receive the following from one of our artist walkers.

Jill Rock http://www.cargocollective.com/JillRock

“thinking on Chile and my time there after watching Neruda the film today it did occur to me that in Threads and Words there is another story worth telling.

I think I mentioned on the city walk that I had been in touch with a friend of mine John Dugger whilst he was showing work at Raven Row.
John was Cecilia’s partner and co worker in Artists for Democracy.

Artists for democracy worked over many years with a simply defined ethos:

J A V

Joy
Autonomy
Voluntary

They also had 4 watchwords – art as participation – as labour – as information – as energy

when I was on a walker’s walk a few weeks ago on Dungeness I suggested to the group that they made a work whilst walking along using a barbecue rack I had found on the beach the day before on the condition that they worked as JAV

It did occur to me that it might be worth contacting Cecilia Vicuña and telling her what we are doing because it is very much in the spirit of Artists for Democracy especially with the Edinburgh connection.

Especially now as democracy seems to be eaten up by capitalism and far right politics which have little respect for it but callously use the word for their own ends.”

DEVELOPMENTS #ThreadandWord

So ideas and events from the walk last March have developed in many different ways.

Quipucamayocs
I have been busy in the studio making ‘Quipucamayocs’, a series of artefacts using the ropes knotted by the walkers who took part during the development of the walks culminating in Thread and Word at Espacio Gallery last March.
Thread and Room
@AllanStruthers who participated in the Thread and Word walk at Espacio has collaborated with Robbie and Hannah (also on the walk) to make Thread and Room.

“Having been inspired by the use of movement and thread as a method of communication, we, over the course of 2 hours, silently engaged in a dance that began to explore the inside our house. It was an event that gave a kind of language to the physical space between us. For this we used thread, coloured paper, rubber bands, and the music of Julia-Holter :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-WnjqB8EY.

For more about Thread and Word and Allan’s intervention on our walk in March, Seen not Heard: the Choice of Listening to Objects, http://www.elspeth-billie-penfold.com/thread-and-word-texts-used-in-walk.

Sculpture in the City

I have also heard from the City corporation that the Sculpture in the City program has been chosen as one of the finalists for the Planning Award for Placemaking in the City. It was great to be thanked as  they used the Thread and Word walk to support their entry. We will find out in June if they have won.

Looking Forward

I visited Edinburgh on Monday  April 24th with Renee Rilexie, curator of the Artists Pool, https://www.theartistspool.co.uk.

We met with artists from The Suntrap Studio https://www.suntrapstudio.com and, visited the Dundas st Gallery.We were in good company as Hamish Foulton has an exhibition which had just opened in the gallery upstairs.

We had such a lovely reception and walked to Inverleith House in preparation for another walk with Thread and Word on July 7th. More details to follow.It was fantastic that so many ideas have already developed from one visit .

Cecilia Vicuña wrote Word and Thread at Inverleith House in 1970. I am hoping that they will include images of her work Precario from their archive in their exhibition in July. Although the sign for the exhibition says it includes work from 1889, so not likely. Maybe we can invoke the spirit of her work through our walk.

This is the first exhibition since they closed the gallery at Inverleith House  last October as a cost cutting exercise.

I hope some of you can join us on this walk. It is ticketed on evenbrite, #ThreadandWord. The walk is free but numbers will be limited.

Walking with the Waste Land

Creating new encounters through walking.
April : The Garden Gate to Northdown Park.

We have just started a series of exploratory walks following a route from the Garden Gate in Margate through Northdown House gardens and into Northdown Park.

The intention is to do one walk a month and to engage with the site and use the opportunity to notice the seasonal changes as we walk the area regularly.

The plan is to produce a short leaflet recording what we saw on the walk which can then be used by visitors to the garden and the park.

We are hoping that community members from the Garden Gate project will join us and that they will contribute to producing further leaflets recording the walks for each month.

For more about the Garden http://www.thegardengateproject.co.uk/location.html

We all had a great time on our first walk and are looking forward to the next one on May 17th.

Let me know if you’d like to join us!