A Common Third
Audio-installation—joint-negotiations of routes across hills and mountains.
Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London. 15 January - 28 February 2010
A Common Third is Simon Pope’s first solo show in London and continues his ongoing investigation of walking as an analogue to, and actual process of, being together. In this new work, the artist walks with invited guests in various locations, unfamiliar to either. Through a process of negotiation, they decide upon which route to take, sometimes using a map, but often gauging which way forward most appropriately matches their ability or interest. In turn, each decision is moderated by the weather, familiarity with similar terrains or the ‘lay-of-the-land’, producing new landscapes from their interaction with land and its conditions.
As is the case in several of Pope's recent works, these negotiations are returned to at a later date, with artist and walker entering into another mode: that of recollection and reflection on the many decisions that were made along the way. An audio recording captures descriptions of their way across the terrain. For the exhibition we will hear their attempts to describe those views at moments when significant route-finding decisions were made.
In these descriptions we hear echoes of the Picturesque, long since passed into common-sense and which now frame what we see when walking in hills and mountains. Through its dialogic form, these conventions are placed in proximity to a contemporary preoccupation with sociality, acknowledging the ‘being together through walking together’ which lies at the heart of historical Romantic practices. Also explored is the particular, popular cultural practice of walking, peculiar to a local context - namely the negotiation not only of terrain, but of law, cultural practice and tradition, through which walking in upland Great Britain is constrained and which marks a striking contrast with the expectation of unconstrained movement, the seeds of which were sown by Thoreau’s exclamation, ‘to the west I walk free’ and which are commonplace elsewhere. Pope talks about these works as investigations into models of being together, proposing step-by-step, shoulder-to-shoulder negotiation of each other. As a landscape art practice, this work is also shaped by geographical discourse, proposing a reconsideration of the scopic in relation to the everyday practices through which we engage with the land.
The first walk was made with cultural geographer Hayden Lorimer on the The Buck O' The Cabrach in the Grampians, Scotland in November 2009.
The second walk was made with Pamela Woof, president of the Wordsworth Trust, towards Easedale Tarn in the English Lake District in December 2009.
Lisa Skuret writes about the exhibition in the sixth issue of NOWISWERE (http://www.nowiswere.com/). Download a PDF copy from here. (29/03/10)
A Common Third is included in the touring group exhibition, Walk On at the NGCA Sunderland, MAC Birmingham, Peninsula Arts at University of Plymouth, and Pitshanger Manor Gallery London, UK. (2013-14)
"My very first encounters with the Alps were far from heroic, far from Romantic. In my grandparents' front room, faint 35mm slides were thrown onto a small, pearly screen; often exceeding the frame, and over-spilling onto painted wallpaper, embossed with garden flowers. Alpine scenes appeared as incidental - intermingled with more personal, intimate photographs which were always the primary focus of the narration that accompanied them: images of my grandparents together, or with their new-found German and Austrian friends. (One slide entitled "Our German friends singing to us" depicts ten or more walking companions, seated outside a Tirolean mountain hut, snowy peaks and tree-lined valleys their backdrop.) Above all, I concluded, these were social occasions: journeys made, in the case of my Grandfather, to heal the wounds inflicted during WWII. These were not excursions to retrieve the Picturesque from the mountains: composition, framing and the conventions of painting and drawing were furthest from their minds. Some other stronger attachment motivated the production of these images.
This binding of personal relationships and mountain landscape was a formative experience. As such, my early awareness and understanding of the various socialities of the mountains and their representation has had increasing influence on my recent artwork and the ways in which I work as an artist. "
Notes for presentation to Walking Methods conference, (2008)
