REMAPPING is a series of artworks based on changing the conventions that bind us. “The map” is broken down and then recreated in various modalities of sound, painting and walking.
The Walks: I treat the map as an intentional piece of history and explore these human systems through experience of place in the present day. The maps are usually found, discarded or gifted and used as a starting point for routine walks and research. From Guy Debord in the early 1950s to Richard Long, Janet Cardiff, and Esther Polak more recently, contemporary artists have returned again and again to the walking motif. Today, the convergence of global networks, online databases, and new tools for mobile mapping coincides with my interest in walking as an art form. The rhythms and repetition of familiar walking patterns start to “remap” existing boundaries.
The Paintings: The map is visually restructured through mixed media collage and paint built from the found environment. I attempt to make something new from the past and reorder information just as each systemized map has been created previously. The paintings become saturated with both disparate and unified visual information. Details such as birdsong, flora and fauna as well as concepts around birth, decay, growth and rejuvenation provide cyclical rhythms which predominate the work. The paintings have a perception of moving lines, shifting spaces and disappearing and emerging forms.
The Sounds: Stories and sounds are linked from place to gallery setting through audio. Field recordings and interpretive sounds, snippets of human experience are gathered from site specific locations and neighbourhood walks. The result is a heightened sensory experience; listening, looking and rethinking environments and contemplating conventional knowledge systems. The geographical, historical and cultural context of a site or object are central themes to the recordings while physical spaces become areas of exchange and exploration. Themes emerge such as presence/absence, the commons, loss and shifting perceptions. The virtual recordings also raise questions about established truths, singular narrative histories and authorship through the fabrication of new stories.
