Generative LANDscape Artist

Australian Walking Artists

Exploring the intersection of artmaking and human terrestrial movement
auswalkingartists@gmail.com

MEDIA RELEASE: 11 January 2024

Articulate project space to host comprehensive national survey of Australian Walking Art

Articulate project space in Leichhardt, Sydney will host a walking art exhibition from 10 February to 3 March 2024. This exhibition brings together artworks inspired by walking from 20 artists across Australia for whom walking is central to their creative practices.

Opening on 10 February 2024 at 2pm, the exhibition titled Way Beyond, is a comprehensive survey exhibition by Australian Walking Artists and is the first exhibition for the national network formed in mid-2023.

Co-convenor of Australian Walking Artists (AWA), Molly Wagner says the assembled works and walks highlight the rich diversity of creative walking practice within the Australian Walking Artists network.

“We’re putting one foot in front of the other, literally and metaphorically, in rural, urban, and suburban landscapes, to inspire hope.”

Exhibition works include drawings, sculptural installations, textile works, videos, soundscapes, publications, and photographs. Walking events, ‘walkshops’, and artist’s talks will be offered as part of the public program during the exhibition.

The artists in Way Beyond include: Leonie Andrews (ACT), Tracey Benson (QLD), Renata Buziak (QLD), Helle Cook (QLD), Mick Douglas (VIC), Kim V. Goldsmith (NSW), Annelies Jahn (NSW), Lisa Jones (NSW), Linda Knight (VIC), Bruce Mowson (VIC), Ainslie Murray (NSW), Sue Pedley (NSW), Perdita Phillips (WA), Anke Stäcker (NSW), Rochelle Summerfield (NSW), Bianca Tainsh (QLD), Amy Tsilemanis (VIC), Nicole Voevodin-Cash (QLD), Molly Wagner (NSW), and Leanne Wicks (NSW).

Way Beyond sets a historical precedent in Australia as being the most comprehensive exhibition of Australian Walking Artists to date. Not since the 2018 Lismore Regional Gallery exhibition From Here to There: Australian Art and Walking, curated by Jane Denison and Sharne Wolff, has the spotlight been on what is more widely recognised internationally as a significant act to create artworks and address the topics of our times.

Molly Wagner and fellow AWA convenor, Kim V. Goldsmith have been actively involved with the international walking creatives network, Walk Listen Create, and are keen to find more artists in Australia interested in the intersection of artmaking and human terrestrial movement.

Australian Walking Artists will also exhibit Way Beyond at the Wayout Artspace in Kandos, NSW, later in 2024, where interactions with and conversations about walking art will continue.

Media contacts: Molly Wagner 0415 456 014 auswalkingartists@gmail.com OR

Kim V. Goldsmith 0419 439 923 kvgoldsmith.creative@gmail.com
Images for media use are available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qFdRcAoy6qJMVUzMXNeay5Yxwxd8eMtf?usp=share_link

HOW to Stay Calm and Stay Healthy!!!

ART

Take a Billycan for a walk and focus on making, ART!!

Ok, its now the beginning of Term 2, everything has been turned on its end and I am now teaching online a Visual Arts course [digitally] for 12 -18 years olds.

We have been asked to return to the classroom to teach all online as the students stayed at home. Like all of us, I was anxious and apprehensive in returning to the work place.

Everyday for the past 60 days I have carried this can with me to document being here, being present. These drawings are my embodied experience during this time, cut out from the centre of a book that in itself will become an artwork, or at least a good place to hide shit in that big hole I have cut out of each and every page…. Cause really who is going to go to my shelf and say “Hey look, I think I’ll read how to Stay Calm and Stay Healthy!!!”

Self-help books were my Father’s go to, he had purchased many from Readers Digest over the years!
before he past, he had bought this same book [that had been repackaged by reader’s digest more than once] ‘Stay Calm, Stay Healthy’ he bought
4 times, I thought that was a sign!!

So it starts with ‘How to stay Calm and Stay Healthy’ no mention of how to deal with a pandemic!!! I read on, then decide to use this as my paper for M.A.D.E Walking Billycan drawings, in fact a better use for the text, this is what they look like.

I did this to Stay Calm and Stay Healthy and to counteract day-to-day pressures of returning to the work place during a pandemic! Not sure if I was holding any helm no matter what the sea, I just knew I was anxious, worried and frightened. I could only imagine how other more vunerable than me were dealing with the situation. Plus didnt want to go anywhere woutside my house.

Above are the first 14 days, obviously I hadn’t moved much I went to work, sat infront of a comoputer for 6 hours and I came home that was the day.

Not sure why some of these are loading sideways or blurry but it pretty much sums up the limited movement, yet nervous energy I was creating and sharing that through my body into the drawing, in the can!

There was one exceptional day when I took the very excited dogs for a walk on the beach. It was so energised the pen broke and this is the result.

Teaching during LOCK-Down

ART, Drawing, Experiential, Experiential Drawing, Generative Art, Kinetic drawing, Landscape art, M.A.D.E Walking, Time Based Art, Walking, Walking with Intent

Beginning of Term 2 teaching in Queensland, no students only the staff on campus, all online delivery. Teaching a practical skills based learning subject online has many challenges which I’ve never done it before, so I’ll just jump straight in… I’ve got this, it’s in the can!!

I just have to keep moving.

“Take time to be kind to yourself“

I am so grateful I am a Teaching Artist and have an income and a creative mind to explore this new ‘living’ landscape we have found ourselves in. I am stronger, innovative and more resilient than I thought I was.

LOCKED-Down M.A.D.E Walking

ART, Draw to perform, Drawing, Experiential, Experiential Drawing, Generative Art, Kinetic drawing, M.A.D.E Walking, Time Based Art, Walking, Walking with Intent

Initially when Covid first started I came down with the Flu, I couldn’t get tested because I didn’t meet the criteria. Who could sure, so I isolated myself and stayed home for the next 14 days teaching and the next 14 days preparing term 2 teaching as an online program ready for schools return.

During this time I couldn’t walk far, for long or intensely and ran out of paper so I started to cut up and use old brochures, magazine and disused books to draw on. I kept the Billycan close and moved it as I moved…

I documented the paper before I used it to draw on and then after for 28 days before returning to teach on campus. Except the first day as I was so anxious of the entire situation the world was no in and how it made me feel was completely reflected in the first drawing. From a plumbing brochure of a woman washing her hands, after the drawing it seemed they were bleeding from all the washing.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Places I couldn’t go

The Maroochy River Golf Course brochure

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Festivals that weren’t going to happen

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Forgot this day to document the initial image from the Horizon Festival Program.

Day 22

Day 23

The Refinery Program brochure for its images of meeting places, people and happy gatherings

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Forgot to take an image of the day before returning to the school campus

BILLYCAN PROJECT M.A.D.E Walking in Dalby

ART, Art Gallery, Draw to perform, Drawing, Exhibitions, Experiential, Experiential Drawing, Generative Art, Kinetic drawing, Landscape art, M.A.D.E Walking, New Media Art, Performance art, Time Based Art, Tracked Mapped Movements, Walking, Walking with Intent

Dalby Billycan Project is an ALL age and ability activity, it works when you’re moving, skipping, slow walking, line dancing, shuffling, from a wheel chair and even moments of stillness creates a ‘SELFIE’ drawing. Each individual carries while walking/moving, a ‘Billycan’! Yes the iconic Australian boil a BILLYCAN – can, is especially kitted out to become a drawing machine. HOW? Inside there is a weighted pen suspended over paper that records the simplest of movements, even moments of stillness, capturing your swagger, your own personal drawing of how you move within the world creating a drawing as unique as your finger print.

Artistically speaking this process is a cataloguing of impressions as cartographical, narratives of direct marks resulting from sequenced events that is your experience of walking in the landscape.

Thanks to this method of creating, the drawing is an artwork which emulsifies location and experience together into an inextricable whole. It also records a period of time, personal exertion that produces a narrative conveying physically the drawings relationship with them, who they are and how they move.

These seemingly symmetrical but uneven drawings cannot be separated from the walk, the travel, the effort of self. Encouraging the community to engage in their own landscape to create drawings of their everyday in Dalby.

Now, scientiﬁcally, walking/moving increases the size of the brain regions linked to planning and memory and enhances creativity. From walking Walkers come away from the experience with an altered perception of place, having created a subjective map, people see things anew notice and reflect on their own algorithms which translates into art and strengthens their relationship with where they are in the world. A wondrous mind and body connection.

Dalby Billycan Project challenged the face of standard exercise and makes it a gentle creative pursuit – with wellness on the side. ‘My challenge everyday now is not the calories I lose or how far I walk but the drawing I create today, and how to better it tomorrow.’ Annette Wegg

M.A.D.E Walking in Dalby Daily

ART

Each day at 7am and 5pm I would walk a similar route around the centre of town, tracking, photographing and Billycan Drawing. Encouraging other walkers to do the same, to engage and have fun. In the creation of their own analogue selfie.

I met some beautiful people who not only took up a Billycan but have done some of the most amazing drawings to date. These were the two dog walkers Alan and Harry