Walk On, passing through an exhibition

Exhibition - Walk On: 40 years of Art Walking, Pitzhanger Manor House

The Walk Book and CD, Janet Cardiff, 2005. Walks in Paris, London, and New York.

I am sitting on a park bench in Ealing and switch on Janet Cardiff’s narrative. Instantly I am connected to her reality, she is sitting on a park bench, in the very different urban environment of Central Park, New York. She describes children on bikes passing by and exactly at the same moment children cycle past me, here in London. I listen to more descriptions but wander off in my mind as a cat has just approached and a group of people gather round to stroke it. A choir is practising: she explains’ I am very bad at linear working; I use an open ended narrative, skipping from one thing to another’. I listen to more fragments as she passes through the streets of New York and begins to distinguish memory from perception. ‘In pure memory the temporal sequence of events is shattered’. I agree with that but start to lose interest. No longer able to connect to her continuing observations, I realise that listening to this narrative is displacing me from being here, now. Police sirens pass in the distance, was it here, or there in Central Park? 

Janet Cardiff would like to ‘move a whole room like a time machine from London to New York’. I think she just moved a park.

Simon Pope, A Common Third

We meet walking artist Simon Pope, we cross the park and chat without really noticing what's around. He escorted us out of the park as his contribution in 'Walk On'. We re-enter and admire the blossom and trees on the way back. We sit at the kiosk, eat ice cream and people watch.

Walking and Drawing in Snowdonia

Four days, walking and drawing on remote mountains in Snowdonia, focusing on the rhythmic sound of walking and sounds of the surrounding landscape through the Zoom mic headphones. I first notice how easily I climb the steep gradient to the lake, listening has changed the emphasis, drawing attention away from the usual dominant visual clues of distance. Walking in silence with a new focus on listening has created a different atmosphere and altered my experience of the landscape. Confusingly, it has become internalised and at the same time a vaster space. It is quiet, sounds are distant, the mist occasionally lifts over the ridge and sun glints through from behind it. I stop and draw at a rest point

Up towards lake

My focus shifts; switching from listening to seeing, the steep incline of the path becomes more physical, more demanding. By focusing on the rhythm of walking I hadn't noticed how quickly I gained height, the remote mountain ridge now dominates. I try to respond with quick drawings of the ever changing mists that cover and uncover the varied contours ahead. I recognise Turner’s problems and how he used the advantages of a misty effect to accentuate distance in his work, confusing altering and denying form he develops his idea with and in the mist. His structures do not merely describe what is underneath it.

Walter Thombury, The Life and Correspondence of JMW Turner

 

Drawn from the National Gallery- pencil on small sketch book Jill Evans

 

 

 

 

Drawn on Site exhibition

Skirting it

Skirting it, inside the shop, following around the joint between floor and wall until it becomes a drawn line that outlines the edge of this space. Draw and move on, draw again, changing position changes viewpoint, passing an object alters its position, the room moves around me. I apply rules to the drawing - draw everything below this line, mapping all shapes that interrupt it. Objects that intersect this outline now become part of the floor plan. The rules are difficult to follow, I must switch thinking, cutting out the brains overriding recognition factor of pre learnt understanding. Objects and floor resettle, transferring onto a single visual plane. The necessary analysis, makes an interesting drawing exercise on pure observation, helping to understand this visual switch. Changing the rules, as you now control the way your brain sees and makes connections.

Draped drawing - time is connected to distance.

Ceiling pipe

Alison Carlier's impressed lines on paper

Skirting it, five corners

Passing By

Drawn on Site

I have been given the opportunity to take over an empty shop for a one week drawing residency. Invited by Transition Dorking, a voluntary, environmental group I will be drawing on site in the shop throughout the week with Alison, another MA Drawing student. We have decided to make work directly in response to our surroundings, passers-by will be able to pop in and see how the work progresses, hopefully it will.

Day 1.

Wondering how to make drawings, surrounded by these bizarre silver striped interior walls and feeling awkward drawing alone in here with my back to the open door. Eventually I made a word piece called Passing By.

Passing by

Trolley and two green carriers
White bag tucked under his arm
Tweed and a book
Blue waterproof and orange carrier
White stripes and blue backpack
Striding and swinging shopping
Red top and black briefcase
No-one
Blue raffia and rolled mat
Grey hair and green mac
Two up, two down
All black with checked scarf
Blue and blue stripes
Green bag, brown bag
Two matching apple green macs
Long mac and white carrier
Small boy swinging shopping
Two in black with one bright green carrier
Chatting ladies and shopping trollies
Three carriers and a grey jacket
Clattering shoes, swinging a bag
Pushing mobility trolley, slowly
Quickly, two large boxes on his shoulder
Return of red top with two new bags
Black coat and large white paper carrier
Two together, red cotton bag between
All in black with papers and huge black bag
Turquoise legs
Pink legs
Two brown coats and two sticks
Speedy, spotty trolley
Traffic sounds
Two pass quickly, big strides
Plastic covered pushchair, purple coat pushing
Four up, one down
All brown, hood up
White ear phones, white bag
Balanced orange carriers, striding
Small in pink passing zebra umbrella
Slow walk, swinging wide cotton bag
Three under one large black umbrella
Red top, grey shorts… postman
Two, woolly hoods up
Four down, mostly in green

  Thursday's drawings

Friday, We are both surprised and excited in the direction the drawing has taken, just curated the show for tomorrow. 

Chronology of Walking

See new walking chronology on 'Pages' 

Worms Head view 5.8.2004 Jill Evans

I have added this list of some of the places I recall walking, each has some significance to my drawing . As memories reappear I will add them, it’s more or less in chronological order.

Installed in the National Gallery

Installing TQ 15807 53205 - Charcoal on paper Approx 82cm wide x 200cm long. 2013

Drawn after walking, noticing, connecting, differences on a local walk.

Writing and drawing connections

Drawing connections and my written paper.

Residue of differences

Charcoal on paper 

An array of left behind fragments relating to places I have noticed, lingered, paused and taken interest in - physicality of angle, slope, drop, gravity, space, structure or incidental aspect that catches my attention.The investigation and marks reflect a direct experience recalled, or recorded.

13 desiccated sparrows found in an unused woodburner, each frozen pose delicate and beautiful, requires critical observation. 





Shell drawing for Mum
She found this large, old and battered shell abandoned on waste ground, next to a grave yard many years ago and has always treasured it. After visiting Tracey Emin's She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea at Margate; I had a go with Emin's free blue wax crayon, the perfect drawing implement for this shell.
Here the rhythms and flow, echo Emin's loosely drawn figures . Blue appropriately connects shell and sea.


Gibbets Hill, Hindhead
These small quickly drawn rhythms in pencil describe this huge space. 
Turner walked and sketched here making many fleeting pencil drawings about the distant space, a subject he worked with throughout his life.                                 

A friend handed on these animal skulls, drawn here using a 60cm extended pencil, less control changes qualities of mark. The challenges in this method of drawing enticed visitors to have a go at my Summer Open Studio, the difficulties of making the drawing from a distance cancelled the fear of failure as expectations were low and skills of precision drawing unnecessary. A surprising number of visitors joined in and had a go, initially finding control of the pencil at distance, difficult but quickly discovering an alternative method to  achieve an interesting mark.