04/03/2014

The Walking Encyclopaedia's Walking Artists of the Day - Charles Monkhouse, Cheryl Pagurek, Dr. Chris Wright and Christopher Mollon


























In a continuing series throughout the duration of The Walking Encyclopaedia, we'll be highlighting, daily, the works of four practitioners who employ the walk within their practice. Each of the highlighted artists and artworks were submitted for exhibition to The Walking Encyclopaedia. In each case alongside their artist statement, a link to the artist's website is provided for further exploration.

The Walking Encyclopaedia is a co-production between AirSpace Gallery and the Walking Artists Network.

#25 - Charles Monkhouse - Night Vision






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#26 - Cheryl Pagurek - Bodies of Water







Walking people of all ages form the basis of Bodies of Water, a 7 ½ minute HD video that combines the fluidity of life drawing with video footage of urban reflections in water. It intertwines narratives of human journeys with those of travelling waters in a vivid expression of colour, energy, and motion. Animated figures of rippling water portray an ongoing flow of humanity, a testament to both constant change and continued endurance. A wide range of emotion is conveyed by the fluctuating character of the water, and through the gestures of the walkers. Through their posture and manner of movement, the individuals express confidence and frailty, joy and loneliness, nonchalance and playfulness, exuberance and hesitancy. The layered ambient soundtrack envelopes viewers with both abstract and urban-sourced sounds, evoking the undulations of water and the rhythms of walking.

Bodies of Water developed out of several recent works in photography and video that dwell in the transitional, liminal spaces between natural and built environments, abstraction and representation, photography and painting. The State of Flux photographs, River Suite photo-work and Wave Patterns video all employ water imagery within a conceptual framework to investigate the intersections between these dualities. Bodies of Water gives new form to these concerns by marrying the human body with urban reflections in water.

Cheryl Pagurek is a photo-based and video artist living in Ottawa, Canada. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Victoria (1992).  


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#27 - Dr. Chris Wright - Space Walk


Space Walk QuickTime movie 1 min. 32 sec.


Space Walk is the narrative of a deserted and empty space. It is a sightless ‘shuffle’ concentrating on the act and process of walking. A guide line was attached to various random points of the space to create a handhold whilst the camera was attached parallel to the eyes thus presenting a disjointed visual accompanied by the sounds of breathing recording the effort of the act, the sound of footsteps and the occasional bumps where body meets wall.

What emerged was the disorientating account of the walking process where, without visual aids, the body attunes to the slightest change in the way sound is heard and twists and turns the head in an effort to ‘place’ oneself. By constant repetition of the route, it became possible to have an elementary understanding of the space through changes in the sound although it was not always possible to judge distances accurately as can be seen by the collisions with the walls.

This work is a response to space through the performative action of walking documenting the narrative of that process.

Wright's main research interests concern the border and other transitional spaces. These are explored mainly through installation, expanded sculpture, photography and sound using temporary and ephemeral interruptions to locate, re-locate and re-contextualise territory referencing what could be, what might be or what has been.

Website - www.chriswright.co.uk

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#28 - Christopher Mollon - Thirty Two Thousand Four Hundred Sixteen / Transient Buoy
Transient Buoy (2011) was a durational action that lasted for six and half hours to mark the area uncovered by a low tide. The performance ended when the tide had turned.
This text was made in response to that work. 

Christopher Mollon makes durational performance-installation,
Currently, he is interested in wrecking and foraging for his materials from site-specific areas of abandonment and solitude.Mollon treats the task of finding his objects as pilgrimage due to the journeys often coinciding significantly with natural passages of time. Through his findings, he is developing images and a vocabulary of objects that seek to act as transcendental and phenomenological markers in time based performance.
He has made and shown work in site-specific areas of North Yorkshire and performed nationally at O U I Performance, YORK; Bordeline/, NORWICH and ]performance s p a c e [, LONDON.

Born in Scarborough (North Yorkshire), he now lives and works in Saltaire (West Yorkshire). In 2010, he graduated from York St John University with a BA (Hons.) degree in Performance Studies.
Mollon is a member of BEARING FLUX, a Yorkshire-based artist collective that use performance art as methodology for exploring site and place.

















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