To hear the hrumph of a big hairy thing
07.03-28.03.2024
You are walking, getting deeper into the landscape, you are clambering, crawling, hopping, jumping, treading, squishing and plodding. In your hands are tightly folded papers, a sheet of card, a fist full of graphite, a pencil case slung across your chest, a rucksack that includes snacks far beyond the journey’s requirements, and sometimes a dog. As you walk, balancing all these things, ears open, nostrils wide, eyes straining with delight to take in what they see, your fingers itch and move, and dart, and stutter, they weave and slip, walking themselves across the paper.
Exhibition Photograph - 30.03.2024
Fragment of 'Rio Della Misericordia (night walks) Venice : 05.11.23 – 3 nights'
Exhibition Photograph - 30.03.2024
Mont Rochelle Nature Reserve : 07.09.23 – 4 hr hike
“To hear the hrrrumph of a big hairy thing” is a collection of drawings made by walking across blank OS map papers. This act of walking that makes the drawings, the pace of footsteps, the terrain assessed by toes, the length of the walk, the textures and tone of it, all find their way onto the paper.
These map papers have become fine companions over this last year. Their folds are friendly territories to cross with a 10b pencil. Their blank crispness always feels ready to take on a journey, not just a view. They would be upset if you stood too still with them for too long. They unfold and are filled with you as you walk, marked full of place, and route.
Fragment of ‘Rio Della Misericordia (night walks) Venice : 05.11.23’
Each drawing that forms a part of “To hear the hrrrumph of a big hairy thing” is a re-writing of a landscape into a series of assemblages. An exquisite corpse of fleeting glimpses, lingering eyes, bumped pencils, rain drops, trips and falls, distant trees suddenly looming large, cavern deep darks.
With environmental wolves at our door, we need to seek for new ways of seeing, for new ways of feeling and reading our environment. These drawings made by walking are just one such method that works for me. Traversing these lands in this manner is a form of performance, a form of research, a form of creation, of conversation, self-care, discovery, interrogation, and appreciation. From these walks these new landscape assemblages condense space, time, journey, fact, thought, feelings and understanding down into a new story, a new book, a new map to review that space from and connect to it. The drawings in “To hear the hrrrumph of a big hairy thing” are the outcome of this act, the work was the walk itself.
This series of drawings mustered from a series of walks and trips in 2023 to Venice, South Africa, Leipzig, Hampstead Heath and the 100 Acre Wood. There are a total of 12 drawings and a set of sketch books that contain walks that lasted between 2 minutes and a whole day.
The 100 Acre Wood : 27.08.23 – 1 day hunt for Whinnie the Pooh and friends
Cape Columbine Nature Reserve : 14.09.23 – 6hr ramble
Exhibition Photograph - 30.03.2024
Fragment of ‘Rio Della Misericordia (night walks) Venice : 05.11.23’
Thomas Kendall
Thomas is an artist, designer and educator focusing on literary ecology. His practice explores drawn and written fictions as ways for people to actively connect to and participate with their environment.
As co-director of art and landscape practice, Wayward, Thomas has pioneered the creative use of underutilised land and meanwhile spaces into large scale community driven projects, applying his art practice to living, growing and built community projects. His design process is centred around open participation, understanding and expressing stories that connect people through nature.
Thomas teaches BSc Architecture and Interdisciplinary Studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
The exhibition is curated by Kirsty Badenoch.
Echo Valley, St. James : 17.09.23 – 2 hr hike
