Tuesday 18 February 2014

The Walking Encyclopaedia - A reconnaissance walk with Phil Smith




In just over a week, esteemed walking artist Phil Smith of Wrights & Sites and Mythogeography fame will be leading a brand new group walk, designed specifically for The Walking Encyclopaedia.

Phil's walk is entitled, Refrains For Uncertainly Sacred Spaces and will look to explore, uncover and explode mythologies built up around the imposition of the notion of sacred on particular city spaces. 

As Phil puts it -
This is a walk in search of pseudo-sacred spaces; these might be the ruins, fabrications, fadings and hoaxes of sacred space; they might include spaces that once were regarded as sacred but have been traduced or abandoned, like a chapel that is now used as offices, or a fake sacred space like a stone circle erected as ornamentation in a children’s play area. We will follow a route of promising possibilities and test out some little moments of transgression and transcendence, nosiness and excavation, while on the lookout for other pseudo-sacred spaces on the walk itself. 

Before this week's Soup Kitchen, I had the privilege of joining Phil on his recce walk of the environs around the Gallery. Acting as onlooker and assistant to Phil, was a really instructive experience.

I think we started out, or at least I did, with the idea that we would cover a large distance, considering the 3-4 hours we have put aside for the walk, yet it quickly became clear, that Phil's eye for the minutiae of the urban landscape meant that in the 2 and a bit hours of our walk, we physically travelled probably no more than a few hundred metres - yet in metaphysical terms, it felt like a bit of a marathon!

And as ever when you are walking someone else's walk, you start to see things you wouldn't necessarily see. I've lived in this city for a good many years, and yet Phil, a stranger, with strangers eyes,  took me to parts of the City - only a few hundred yards from the Gallery, that I had never seen before.

I don't want to give too much away at this point, and full documentation of the walk will follow soon, but as a taster, here are some of the things we were looking at.




















Thursday 6 February 2014

The Walking Encyclopaedia - DAY TEN - some finishing preps and the start of the hang




INCLUDING TODAY!
And so, well in to the final stretch, exciting things are starting to happen at the Gallery - Tim Knowles - surely one of the the hardest working and most conscientious artists we have worked with has put the finishing touches to the whole new wall he has constructed. The wall will be the host of a huge line drawing due for completion today - watch out for upcoming footage. Added to that, the Gallery window has  had a start made to it too - a bit of Kielder Forest brought to Sunny Stoke.
Paths of Variable Resistance marks the latest show in Tim's ever expanding career - it's his fifth exhibition of 2014 - and also he'll be showing at a Walking Exhibition at The Mac in Birmingham running concurrently with ours - Walk On will be well worth a visit and represents the strength of contemporary cultural walking.



Philippe Guillaume




And the hang for the Walking Encyclopaedia started too - with the first pieces of physical work entering the show - can you see yours?
  







Wednesday 5 February 2014

The Walking Encyclopaedia - DAY NINE - something new from Alec Finlay


One of the delights so far in the process of putting together The Walking Encyclopaedia has been the interest and generosity shown in and towards the project from a full spectrum of practitioners.

The idea seems really to have had an engagement - a sense of validation, and fraternity has shone through - and part of the importance, we believe, has been in the open nature of the project. And part of the success in terms of word being spread lies in the quality of the Network - the Walking Artists Network.

Each day, as parcels and packages have arrived, we have discovered new gems, unique approaches and unexpected treasures.





Today's surprise came in the form of an insight into some new work sent in by hugely influential walking artist, Alec Finlay.  Finlay is a Scottish-born artist currently based in Edinburgh, whose beautiful work takes various forms and media, including poetry, sculpture, collage, audio-visual, neon, and new technologies; often it reflects on human engagement with landscape.



His Blog is a real treasure of emotion, and great imagery, and a sense of presence and existance and movement through a landscape - check it out here.



Alec has sent us an insight in to some new work he is making specifically for this blog.


Alec's presence in The Walking Encyclopaedia will be in the form of two publications - White Peak | Dark Peak and 14 VIEWS ON THE ISLE OF SKYE - plus a brand new piece of work, which will be unveiled on Friday's opening.




Thanks Alec, and to all contributors to The Walking Encyclopaedia.



Sunday 2 February 2014

The Walking Encyclopaedia - DAY SIX - more walking categories


 


More category suggestions from WAN members - a sense of individual approach is really starting to emerge.

WALKING CATEGORIES


FROM ANNA FRANCIS
Research
Investigation
Tour
Performance
Conversation piece


FROM KRIS DERBY
Edges
Water
Gender
Environmentalism
Pilgrimage
Labyrinths
Flaneur/Flaneuse
Audio
Film
Intimate
Countertourism
GPS
Autotopography
Trek

FROM ALEXANDER CHAMPION
Circumambulation
Slow-walk
Walking for health

FROM BRAM ARNOLD
Transecting.
-The act of treating a walk like an ecological transect.
Conversational.
-Purposeful stepping out with one other person, using the walk as a
landscape for the imagination.
Editorial.
-Using a footpath as a way of interpreting a text, through reading it into
a place.
Memorial.
-A walk in contemplation of a significant life event, the mind only works
at 3 miles an hour, giving it time and space to cope with grief, loss.

FROM TRACY KEMMETT
Spiritual connection
inspiration
making  myth
conversations
whims
y

FROM PHILIPPE GUILLAUME
Peripatetic Photography
Relational Ambulation and Wayfinding Walking, 
Strangers and Chance Interaction

FROM AIRSPACE GALLERY
performance
mapping 
psychogeography
exploration
drift/derive


FROM ERIC STEEN
Education
Social Engagement
Discovery

FROM WALTER SIEGFRIED
enhanced perception

FROM KATJA MUENKER
performance
performance installation
walk
hike
experience
intervention

FROM KELLY RANKIN
wanderlust
contemplation
meditation

FROM CHRISTOPHER MOLLON
Liminal
Durational
Ephemeral 
Action
Intertidal
Rural
(Urban)
Site-specific
Site-responsive

FROM STEPH BRADLEY
Pilgrimage
Social Commentary (Collecting & Sharing Stories/News)
Oral History ( Storytelling/Troubadour/Minstrel)
Community Building
Reconnection ( to place, self, other, nature, spirit, soul)

FROM TRAVIS SOUZA
Psychogeography
Education/Research
Politics
Drawing