Hamish Fulton: Walk
Turner Contemporary, Margate, 17th January-7th May
For Wordsworth, Dickens and Dr Johnson, walking was an essential part of creative life. But Hamish Fulton is not just an artist who walks: he describes himself as a “walking artist.” In 1973, he covered the 1,022 miles from Duncansby Head on the coast of Scotland to Land’s End on foot in 47 days. By the end of the trip he had decided he would “only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks.”
In the last 40 years, Fulton has climbed Everest, retraced Sitting Bull’s footsteps at Little Big Horn and walked 106 miles without sleep on Kent country roads. The walks, he says, shift “where the mind’s located,” like a form of meditation. His shows are typically minimalist: vast gallery spaces house photos from his journeys, alongside sketches and spare, haiku-like descriptions.
“Walk,” Fulton’s first solo show in nearly a decade, brings out the political dimension of his work, the Romantic idealist. In 2009, Fulton, who usually walks alone, began to choreograph walks in which hundreds of people took part—walking single file, a metre’s distance from one another, in silence. His slowed-down group walk in support of Ai Weiwei this year (above) was collective action as art; its geometry is worth seeing this winter in Margate.
Turner Contemporary, Margate, 17th January-7th May
For Wordsworth, Dickens and Dr Johnson, walking was an essential part of creative life. But Hamish Fulton is not just an artist who walks: he describes himself as a “walking artist.” In 1973, he covered the 1,022 miles from Duncansby Head on the coast of Scotland to Land’s End on foot in 47 days. By the end of the trip he had decided he would “only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks.”
In the last 40 years, Fulton has climbed Everest, retraced Sitting Bull’s footsteps at Little Big Horn and walked 106 miles without sleep on Kent country roads. The walks, he says, shift “where the mind’s located,” like a form of meditation. His shows are typically minimalist: vast gallery spaces house photos from his journeys, alongside sketches and spare, haiku-like descriptions.
“Walk,” Fulton’s first solo show in nearly a decade, brings out the political dimension of his work, the Romantic idealist. In 2009, Fulton, who usually walks alone, began to choreograph walks in which hundreds of people took part—walking single file, a metre’s distance from one another, in silence. His slowed-down group walk in support of Ai Weiwei this year (above) was collective action as art; its geometry is worth seeing this winter in Margate.
