Walking the Menopause

Spring 2022-2024, Cumbria, Lancashire & Yorkshire

Walking the Menopause is a new body of work that is in development. This work takes the form of menopause mapping-walks (one-to-one and in small groups) that will take place in different sites once a month over the next year. The walks will then be brought together to create a series of walks specifically designed for people affected by the peri/menopause transition that will be published in an artist/guidebook.

Tell it to the Bees

13 -14 August 2021, Princesshay and City Centre, Exeter, Devon

Tell it to the Bees was a honeybee-inspired walking-performance specifically created for Exeter city centre. The performance led participants on a route through the city centre and, pausing at a number of locations where through words, music, film and actions time, reflected upon the relevance of these traditions to experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic and our recovery from it.

Walks to Remember During a Pandemic

SPRING-SUMMER 2020, UK and International

During the spring-summer lockdown (and beyond) people have created memory-maps of walks they have not been able to do phyically. I have now compiled a gallery of the maps, words and photos of those who shared their remembered walks with me.  

Image: Awena Carter's Walk Around the Cwm: ‘To Walk was My Delight’ memory map. 

‘what a labour of joy and love it has been….‘there are so many memories of people woven into the walk’ (Awena Carter, 2020)
 

Lockdown in Lancaster and Morecambe: Walk, Run, Pedal, Push, Map makes visible the paths and places that participating residents of Lancaster and Morecambe visited during the COVID-19 lockdown in spring-summer 2020. These are the paths and places that gave us breathing space – mentally, emotionally and physically.  

Dorothy’s Room

2018 (and tour), Rydal Mount, Ambleside, Cumbria

Dorothy's Room is an immersive installation originally created in Dorothy Wordsworth’s bedroom at Rydal Mount in Ambleside, Cumbria and inspired by Dorothy’s Rydal Journals in which she was bed-bound relying on memory to transport herself into the landscape she had once walked. Dorothy's Room is a companio to the related Women's Walks to Remember: 'With Memory I was there.'

Women’s Walks to Remember: 'With Memory I was there' is a ‘surrogate’ walking-art project specific to the Lake District that re-walks significant walks of those who are no longer able to walk them. The walk might have been for work, leisure, adventure, health, remembrance, creativity, science, companionship or solitude. The reason that the walk can no longer be done might be due to the effects of ageing, illness, accident or circumstance.

 

Harold’s Walk: A Walk to Remember

January 2017, Mardale Head, Bampton

The process of creating Mulliontide (2016) led to a project entitled Harold's Walk: Walk to Remember.

Returning, We Hear The Larks

2-11 November 2018, Lancaster Priory, Lancaster

A new site-specific performance-installation entitled Remembrance: Returning, We Hear The Larks (November 2018). Created in and for Lancaster Priory to mark the centenary of the end of World War One as part of Light Up Lancaster 2018

 

Mulliontide

October 2016, Poldhu Cove to Mullion Cove, Cornwall

Mulliontide was a coastal walking-perofmance from Poldhu Cove to Mullion Cove in Cornwall that focused on a much-loved landscape and explores the places where land, sea and people meet. The performance noticed the effects of tide and time, acknowledged deep feelings for place and recognised the challenges of change – personal and topographical.

Mulliontide: A Guide for Walkers

July 2017, Published by LAW Co, Leeds

Mulliontide: A Guide for Walkers, enables others to undertake the coastal walk from Poldhu Cove to Mullion Cove that I created in 2016 in collaboration with residents of Mullion, Cornwall.

Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertility and Childlessness

16-17 May 2015 (ongoing through published book), Warnscale Fells, Buttermere

Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertility and Childlessness is a self guided walk specific to, and created in, Warnscale, an area of fells to the south of Buttermere Lake.

The Gathering / Yr Helfa

12-14 September 2014, Hafod Y Llan, Snowdonia

The Gathering / Yr Helfa was a site-specific walking-performance based on the annual fertility, reproductive  and life-cycles of the ewes at Hafod y Llan Farm, Snowdon, Wales.

Fissure

May 2011, Ingleborough, Yorkshire Dales

Fissure (20 - 22 May 2011), was a unique walking performance that unfolded over three days in the Yorkshire Dales. It was an extraordinary encounter between artists, scientists, audiences and landscape that explored life, death, grief and renewal.

A woman lies in a foetal position in the landscape

Ghost Bird

September 2012, Langden Valley, Trough of Bowland

Ghost Bird (15 & 16 September 2012), was a silent walking-performance and live-art installation specific to the Langden Valley in the Trough of Bowland, an upland landscape internationally important for its heather moorland, blanket bog and rare birds.

Jack Scout

September 2010, Silverdale, Lancashire

Jack Scout (17 - 26 Sept 2010) was a walking-performance specific to Jack Scout, an intimate location in Silverdale, Lancashire, of bewitching beauty and extraordinary aesthetic, cultural and scientific value overlooking the vast sands and tides of Morecambe Bay.

 

Still Life

Sept 2008, Far Arnside, Morecambe Bay

Still Life was an intertidal performance specific to the sands of Morecambe Bay and the shoreline at Far Arnside in Sept 2008 and rev. 2009. It was created and performed by Louise Ann Wilson and Nigel Stewart.

 

Disconsolate: Mothering Sunday Installation

31 March - 6 April 2019, Lancaster Priory, Lancaster

Mothering Sunday is for many people a challenging and painful day. In acknowledgement of this I have collaborated with the arists Rachel-Ann Powers to create a space in the St Nicholas Chapel where the absences, losses and longings experienced around Mothering Sunday can be acknowledged and held.

Close-up Clougha Pike Collection

April 2018, Clougha Pike, Forest of Bowland

Close-up Clougha Pike is a collection of photographs that capture the extraordinary colour, texture and form of the lichens growing on the rocks at Clougha Pike fell.          

Quaker: Pendle – Firbank – Swarthmoor

March-September 2017, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria

Site-specific research and development project leading to prototype for a set of three artist’s books entitled Pendle, Firbank and Swarthmoor (forthcoming 2019). The books respond to three sites in North West England important to Quaker history.