Walking Dartington
'...the lived body as both the domain of enquiry and research conduit has focused attention, in various ways, of perception-in-motion. In this way, landscape ceases to be understood as a static, framed gaze, and becomes instead the very interconnectivity of eye, body and land; a constantly emergent and perceptual milieu.'
-John Wylie,Landscape 2007
Before my residency, most of the walking I had done to inform my practice was in, or around the city. In particular, I had been walking in the strange zones around the periphery of the city, defined as the ‘Edgelands' by Marion Shoarde, in her essay of the same name, written in 2002. These are marginal spaces with no designated human function; ambiguous, hybridised spaces of decay and re-emergence.
So to find myself surrounded by the lush, verdant fecundity of the Dartington Estate one hot, August afternoon, was strangely disorientating. In sensual terms, it was pleasurable to hear blackbirds, sniff the scented air, and feel the balmy breeze on my skin.
I was slightly disconcerted by the pressure I felt by being a resident artist; as though I had to ‘perform’. The pressure came only from myself, but I was in alien territory. Before arriving in Dartington, my process was to set about finding a strange beauty in the abject ugliness of the city. Normally, I meandered through breakers-yards, I drew flyovers from supermarket carparks, and made photographic jokes about incompetent town planning. In the rural idyll of Dartington, initially, I could find nothing to kick against. I did find an interesting space, an abandoned dairy, while walking from Totnes Station to Dartington and took some photographs through the fence.
'an empty field of action, in which the signs of history and civilisation are absent: the deserts and the terrain vague of the abandoned periphery.'
-Francesco Careri, Walkscapes, 2002
This however, made me feel as though I was hanging on to familiar ways of working; I had come to High Cross to be in Dartington, and to make work about being there, not to keep repeating myself and making the same old work in the same way.
In response to this, I started to push through the hedges and climb over gates, taking short cuts and leaving the designated paths. I found other paths: 'lines of desire' and tracks worn by the feet of local residents, and the hooves of animals. This began to give me a feeling of becoming immersed in the place, rather than merely viewing it as a spectator, from the peripheries.
After a while, I noted that I was beginning to view this rural space in very similar terms to how I had come to view the city. By walking routes again and again I was beginning to understand the tensions,the issues of power and control in this place, as well as its fluxes and flows, both present and historic.
I walked and walked, inventing new routes, joining up the known and unknown places in my mind. I usually took a camera, but not always. One day I walked North, through the woods and along by the River Dart; I walked for four and a half hours and I didn’t see a soul. I found secret places. My feet were scratched by brambles. I ate blackberries and watched spiders building their webs. Time slowed down.
By walking the estate I peeled back the layers and made an intimate connection with the place. I had a sense of lives once lived there. I watched rising and falling of the tidal breath of the River. The tiny little lives of gnats and ants in the woodlands grew enormous and significant. I became immersed in detail; a strange, spiky green caterpillar, a bizarre mushroom, light rippling on the surface of the Dart.
