In This Space – 100 miles on a mountain bike
In this project I set out on a mountain biking journey, covering around 100 miles in 3 days. The video has a brief introduction followed by a copy of the presentation piece and finishing with my reflections on creating and making the project.
Tip : Use the full screen button to view at it’s best.
This project was primarily considered as a presentation via ZOOM to fellow members of the Free Painters and Sculptors artist group on 18th July 2022 and sets out to record that journey in a different way.
Why ‘In This Space’?
I was very much influenced by the work of Richard Long and in particular his book and exhibition Walking In Circles. The book was produced to accompany an exhibition at the Hayward gallery in 1991. In it, he sets out a number of his approaches to working both in and with the landscape.
Over the course of this journey I stopped roughly every 30 minutes to photograph the scene. As the journey itself is strenuous (it involved climbing about 4,500 metres of ascent) I wanted an easy way to do this. Using an iPhone I set out to show those parts of the journey that many of us miss.
We are rightly fixated by the view that is in front of us. It’s as if we want to explore and discover what is over the horizon. You’ll have noticed that the photographs I took blank out that traditional view and instead concentrate on what is immediately under our feet and over our head.
The photographs get us to consider the relationship between those two spaces without the bit that we usually see. The words accompanying each pair of photographs represent ideas and thoughts associated to my time in that space.
Like the work of Richard Long, I hope this project gets us to view the journeys we make with a different eye.
I’d like to Thank you for your time and thank you to the members of the Free Painters and Sculptors for your continued support.
