ABSTRACT
The British artist Hamish Fulton studied sculpture at St Martin’s School of Art in London in the 1960s at a time when sensitivity to landscape was beginning to attract the attention of conservationists. Walking is a key aspect of the work and photography is used to record his journeys. This takes place in real time and the visual material and notes that follow it are a way of allowing the audience to engage with Fulton’s experience of secluded and untravelled ways. Immersing himself in nature away from city culture and the world of art connects him with Romantic traditions in painting and poetry of the past. There is a link between the photo-text and the landscape to which it refers and yet its deadpan style of communication reads more like a documentary
report than subjective interpretation of the event. It is in some measure a critique of the common sense idea that art works provide access to private experience. Walking as a sensual and free activity is the real work. The few words he uses, like the black and white photograph, are objectively descriptive. We note also that the words are not merely a verbal supplement (as a separate title would be) but an integral part of the work inside the same frame. The journey along the ancient pathway between Winchester and Canterbury is recalled in the photo-text. The artist’s experience is mediated by language.
