Way beyond (2024)

Way beyond: an exhibition of Australian Walking artists at Articulate Gallery Sydney 10 February – 3 March 2024 (Opening, 2pm Saturday, 10 February)

With works from follow the Water 2018-2021 fieldwork/performance/photography (walking, listening, cyanotypes, algae, prints, postcards, publication), Kinjarling/Albany

Featuring Pit, moss and granodiorite (Kardarup/Mt Melville) (above), Ngwayir/Western ringtail possum, estimated world population less than 8000, and Flourishing without purity (2018).

The old town of Albany/Kinjarling began on never-ceded Menang country. The streets on the southern side are bounded by open stone-lined drains leading down the slopes to Princess Harbour. In contrast, the land-bound side of the town is home to Yaka Mia — a creek that begins as a trickle, turns into a drain and then back again. Rain, rock and forest define Kinjarling, place of plenty. In the follow the water project I worked with the fall of the land and its seeps and springs to see if these water flows could be reimagined. The drains had been built to handle the flow; to transport water as quickly as possible, to ‘get rid of the problem’. I took people on walks along forgotten drains, and people took me on their favourite walks. I used a strategy “porous repair”: that acts of caring contain the wish that it were not so (from feminist thinker Alexis Shotwell), at the same time that they are entangled with the world around them. The works featured here show details of elemental rock surfaces and the waters of Tjuitgellong/Lake Seppings and the critically endangered Ngwayir/Western Ringtail Possum as well as Environmental scientists pictured rediscovering Yakamia Creek.

Fellow artists: Leonie Andrews (ACT), Helle Cook (QLD), Tracey Benson (QLD), Renata Buziak (QLD), Mick Douglas (VIC), Kim V. Goldsmith (NSW), Annelies Jahn (NSW), Lisa Jones (NSW), Linda Knight (VIC), Bruce Mowson (VIC), Ainslie Murray (NSW), Sue Pedley (NSW), Perdita Phillips (WA), Anke Stäcker (NSW), Rochelle Summerfield (NSW), Bianca Tainsh (QLD), Amy Tsilemanis (VIC), Nicole Voevodin-Cash (QLD), Molly Wagner (NSW), and Leanne Wicks (NSW).

Some other walking projects, artworks, writing

Follow the water. In C. Bates & K. Moles (Eds.), Living with water: everyday encounters and liquid connections. Manchester University Press. (pp. 176-188) (2023)
Seeping, maintaining, flooding and repairing: how to act in a both/and world. Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology, 8, 1-26. (2023)
Neimanis, A., & Phillips, P. Postcards from the Underground. Journal of Public Pedagogies. 4, 127-139. (2019)
Working it out along the way… by John Barrett-Lennard (2014)
The Sixth Shore project (2009-2013)
Walk ’til you run out of water (2012)
Summer Flurries (2011) sound walk outside the Science Gallery, Dublin, Part of Visceral: the living art experiment
The Laramide Trail project (2007)
Sleepwalking (2006)
strange strolls walking art project (2004-2005)
fieldwork/fieldwalking PhD project (2003-2006)

Australian Art Walking Group

More details on the Australian Art Walking Group