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In this final episode of the Wander_Land Exhibition podcast, I talk with Barbara Beyer about her use of materials and the process of developing her ideas for the show. Barbara says of her work "As soon as we start moving, we encounter obstacles, sometimes almost unnotably small, often easily negotiable; where the obstacles grow, our imagination grows too. We overcome them with bridges, stairs, and ladders. Then there is another option – for routes we physically cannot take - we can send tokens: We stay and move at the same time. Where we cannot walk across the water, we skim stones, briefly touching the meniscus of the sealed water surface. Where we cannot walk the distance, the lengths, the time, we can write or draw. A traveller needs a skimming stone and a

drawing tool."

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I discussed with Fiona Campbell her sculpture installation at Tremenheere, including 'Flags of the Forest', a series of eco-flag pieces inspired by woodlands. Campbell has used labour-intensive methods such as hand-stitching, weaving, and hand-made eco dyes to celebrate biodiversity, hopeful of nature being more cared for and thriving. Placed in the landscape near Tremenheere’s woodland and reflected in a water feature, the flags become way markers. The concept was inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s book titled ‘The Word for World is Forest’. Woods and forests provide vital ecosystems - crucial to our survival.

Above and Below is made of reclaimed, discarded and found materials collected over the years on walks, each with a story, such as plant fibres, insects, bones, pondweed and scrap steel.  Some were gleaned at Tremenheere and from a recent ACE funded trip to my birthplace in Kenya. The work is a response to the entanglements of matter, rhizomatic systems and debris that make up the strata we walk on.

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Anna Gillespie’s works are a celebration of the ways in which humans have trodden the land and continue to do so.  The indoor work is about linear walking – journeying, pilgrimage, purpose –whereas the outdoor work celebrates circular movement as we dance, or take part in rituals, themselves sometimes an inner pilgrimage.  

In this time of climate emergency perhaps a distinction should be drawn between our literal human footsteps and our wider ‘footprint’ on the Earth collectively as a species.  The act of making a footprint, of walking, is one of the least harmful things we do as humans.  These works celebrate that action.

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In Solidarity is a video work created collaboratively between Emma Elliott and Susie Olczak which follows on from their previous video collaboration ‘Where The Jungle Meets The Sea…The World Is Split In Two’ which was shot in Armila, Panama where Elliott and Olczak spent time together researching and experiencing living in the Darien Gap. ‘In Solidarity’ was filmed in Cornwall, in the Spring of 2023 when the artists walked parts of the St Michael’s Way together, a coast-to-coast micro-pilgrimage in the Westernmost reaches of Cornwall and shot footage at Tremenheere amongst the sub-tropical planting. The work considers the significance of walking and migration throughout human existence and its connection to survival and place. We walk to save our lives, for spiritual enlightenment, for healing and for leisure. 

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I discuss with William Lasdun his response to the Cornwall seascape and landscape. His work describes meandering paths and curving forms found in nature, not dissimilar to contour lines on OS maps but more tactile and three-dimensional. They’re comprised of linear elements which seek to capture the forces and cycles in the natural world and seek to resonate with features of the local physical and spiritual geography. –  the meandering path of the Pilgrims’ Way, the ancient tin and bronze furnaces where metals were returned to their primordial fluid state, the old Ley lines which pass under the sea at the heart of the mount at Marazion – reaching toward an articulation of the more universal cycles of human experience and the elemental energies of life itself.

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