Looking back: River Bovey Walk (2008)

The distance travelled by foot, travelled by hand (River Bovey Walk) - detail with pedometer | 2008 - | Pencil on paper

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work.

Although this is an old work, it relates to my ongoing interest in tracking movement and measuring. It came to mind again when I visited the (currently suspended) Richard Long show at Thelma Hulbert Gallery Here I was reunited with Long’s Silbury Hill (1970-1), which acted as a major inspiration.

I was attempting to tie together, as closely as possible, the experience of a riverside walk and the process of remembering it later in the studio. Rather than re-walking it, I chose a slower method more akin to writing: I am drew a fine, condensed pencil line on paper.

I recreated the walk in sections, drawing a continuous line between two markers 50cm apart. Each section covers approximately 220 metres of the 6.643km walk and took about eight hours to complete. The walk itself, in total, lasted about 90 minutes. Yet the enormous difference in pace and duration belies the similarities between the two events. As I drew, I was constantly reminded of the process of walking. The drawing was repetitive, rhythmic, meditative. It slowed my mind and allowed it to wander. Both events were about my body moving through space. The paper, like the landscape, has a terrain which the pencil has to accommodate – sometimes it slows it progress, sometimes it throws it off the intended path. Small wobbles of the hand disturbed the precise measure and begin to form ripples that recall the flow of water and the strata of rocks.

Sections of this work were shown in 'Torre Abbey Contemporary Open' (2009), 'Drawn In' (2009) and 'River Bovey Walk' (2008).