The Walking Encyclopaedia

On Februrary 7th, 2014, AirSpace Gallery will be opening its physical and cyber doors to The Walking Encyclopaedia.

In conjunction with The Walking Artists Network, and timed to coincide with Tate's touring Artist Rooms, which brings a collection of works by Richard Long to The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke as part of the 2013 tour, The Walking Encyclopaedia will present a solo show by artist Tim Knowles, and will attempt to bring together a compendium of the vast array of arts practices that concern, contain, and/or are inspired and informed by, the WALK.

Submissions are being invited from the thousands of cultural walkers in any form they wish - photograph, film, sound and written. We will aim to fill a portion of our gallery space with documentation and will include a reading room and a screening room. The month long exhibition will include a specially created walk as well as an Artist Soup Kitchen to discuss some of the themes engendered by the exhibition.

In the 1960's, the conceptuality of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton fuelled what is rapidly becoming the largest participatory segment of contemporary art practice. This exhibition is close to our hearts at AirSpace - our directorate are keen walkers - but beyond that, in broader terms, we fully buy in to the ideas of utilitarianism, activity available-to-all, outward looking and doing. We're excited to start a process of collation and presentation of the state of the walking art practice today.

A Walking Encyclopaedia is an attempt to collate and present as many different artistic responses to, and uses of the walk as possible. Timed to coincide with the Richard Long Exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (part of the Tate’s Artist Rooms On Tour programme), The Walking Artists Network in partnership with AirSpace Gallery is inviting submissions from walking artists and artists who walk to send in documentation of their practice, historic or current, in all forms of media, in order that we can offer a significant overview of the contemporary state of the genre.

Our exhibition will then, become a physical repository for Walking Practices, and we envisage any of the following being submitted:

• Video documentation of walks, and films about walks
• Sound documentation of walks
• Photographs and photographic documentation of walks
• Artworks made on walks, about walks and as walks
• Publications and zines about walks and walking practices (we will have a reading corner within the gallery).Over the month-long course of A Walking Encyclopaedia, and in conjunction with a major exhibition of works by artist Tim Knowles, AirSpace Gallery will be highlighting daily, through its gallery spaces, website and social media outlets, different walking practices and walking artists, submitted via this call. There will also be a Walk planned, and an Artist Soup Kitchen event, themed around walking practices.

Please contact with details of what you would like to submit for A Walking Encyclopaedia, by Friday, 13th December 2013.

AirSpace Gallery, 4 Broad Street, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 4HL 

mail@airspacegallery.org 

Exhibition runs from 7/2/14 to 8/3/14