Exhibitions: Photography, Painting, Multi-media Arts
Zoë Walker
Zoë Walker has spent a number of years away from home, reliant on what can fit in a rucksack and be easily transported from place to place. Part of the attraction for Walker is not arriving, but the experience of travelling in new lands and seeing the unfamiliar. Not fully residing in the places she inhabits, the limbo space becomes the fantasy of escape.
Somewhere Special (1999) presents the artist using a self-created portable mountain as a prop, interacting with it in familiar scenes of travel. Walker juxtaposes the fake winter scenes with the barren wilderness of the Australian outback, emphasising that even in these ideal spaces we are always searching for an alternative. Within this act, the artist literally takes herself out of the urban environment. The images act as documentation of an elaborate performance, providing opportunity for the viewer to consider the nature of travel, the action of returning, and the implications of re-viewing through recorded images.
Walker’s work negotiates the space between child play and social comment, reflecting a desire innate in us to return to a time before the restraints of social conditioning. Previous work has seen Walker pushing, and so highlighting, the limits and meaning of fantasy. Playing with the notion of fairy-tale lands, Portable Paradise (1996) observes Walker secluded in her own utopia of a tropical island, highlighting a pertinent comment on our desire to escape the everyday realities of living in a community. Other work such as Limbo-land (2002) continues this exploration of the unobtainable, oscillating between the calming dreamlike, and the tragic–comedy as we see the artist attempting to use a home-made moon-like sphere to reach a world visible, but always out of reach. She emphasises her position between the land and the sky in forestalled lift-off, suspended in limbo.
Somewhere Special sees Walker pushing out the parameters of reality and fantasy a little further, where her attempt to reach an ideal landscape references actual past adventures for new lands and undiscovered paradises. Somewhere Special draws attention to an inability in people to fully interact with their natural surroundings. Similar to the experience of viewing objects in a museum, the visitor leaves the space of the new when he feels his interest has been exhausted, and when the unusual becomes familiar and the spaces of private home territory become appealing again. As humans we form habitats, creating spaces for different cultural events, therefore designating a space for the experience of the ‘other’, and a space for the familiar.
Having travelled to Australia, Walker was interested in the actions of people out of their original territories, and the way comparisons and references to familiar landscapes are created. Somewhere Special resonates with the tales of colonization and the European settlers from the 18th and19th Centuries, a time when pioneers travelled endlessly, intent on finding verdant pastures to recreate the familiar environment of Europe, within a landscape of extreme geographical and climatic difference. Thus resulting in a complex and almost surreal parallel world of familiar settings for the travellers of today.
Somewhere Special focuses on Walker’s own experience in Australia, acting out the events of the explorers before her, she highlights the sinister desolation of the environment, while mimicking these actions of exploration, which at times verge on the ridiculous. Walker experienced a sense of freedom not found in the UK. The unusual environment made this new landscape beautifully alien, perfect but tinged with fear and a sense of loss.
The title Somewhere Special expresses Walker’s experience of seeing the words “We’re special” scratched in tarmac on a Canberra road. The work highlights the real private space that exists within all of us, where everything goes one way, a space flexible and able to meet our personal ideals. The title stresses a need for assurance, for an understanding of ourselves and those around us, while the territorial element of these words acts as a haunting reminder of recurrently restricted perspective. The end of the 20th Century saw a generation of people travelling to continents that before were out of reach and globalisation has reformed the world to be smaller and easier to navigate. The snow-capped mountain tent mimics a love for travel, but ultimately highlights the complexities within any environment. As Walker contends, “We exist in a real and fictional space in our head, and travel is perhaps just an extension of that.”
Zoë Walker
Somewhere Special (1999) presents the artist using a self-created portable mountain as a prop, interacting with it in familiar scenes of travel. Walker juxtaposes the fake winter scenes with the barren wilderness of the Australian outback, emphasising that even in these ideal spaces we are always searching for an alternative. Within this act, the artist literally takes herself out of the urban environment. The images act as documentation of an elaborate performance, providing opportunity for the viewer to consider the nature of travel, the action of returning, and the implications of re-viewing through recorded images.
Walker’s work negotiates the space between child play and social comment, reflecting a desire innate in us to return to a time before the restraints of social conditioning. Previous work has seen Walker pushing, and so highlighting, the limits and meaning of fantasy. Playing with the notion of fairy-tale lands, Portable Paradise (1996) observes Walker secluded in her own utopia of a tropical island, highlighting a pertinent comment on our desire to escape the everyday realities of living in a community. Other work such as Limbo-land (2002) continues this exploration of the unobtainable, oscillating between the calming dreamlike, and the tragic–comedy as we see the artist attempting to use a home-made moon-like sphere to reach a world visible, but always out of reach. She emphasises her position between the land and the sky in forestalled lift-off, suspended in limbo.
Somewhere Special sees Walker pushing out the parameters of reality and fantasy a little further, where her attempt to reach an ideal landscape references actual past adventures for new lands and undiscovered paradises. Somewhere Special draws attention to an inability in people to fully interact with their natural surroundings. Similar to the experience of viewing objects in a museum, the visitor leaves the space of the new when he feels his interest has been exhausted, and when the unusual becomes familiar and the spaces of private home territory become appealing again. As humans we form habitats, creating spaces for different cultural events, therefore designating a space for the experience of the ‘other’, and a space for the familiar.
Having travelled to Australia, Walker was interested in the actions of people out of their original territories, and the way comparisons and references to familiar landscapes are created. Somewhere Special resonates with the tales of colonization and the European settlers from the 18th and19th Centuries, a time when pioneers travelled endlessly, intent on finding verdant pastures to recreate the familiar environment of Europe, within a landscape of extreme geographical and climatic difference. Thus resulting in a complex and almost surreal parallel world of familiar settings for the travellers of today.
Somewhere Special focuses on Walker’s own experience in Australia, acting out the events of the explorers before her, she highlights the sinister desolation of the environment, while mimicking these actions of exploration, which at times verge on the ridiculous. Walker experienced a sense of freedom not found in the UK. The unusual environment made this new landscape beautifully alien, perfect but tinged with fear and a sense of loss.
The title Somewhere Special expresses Walker’s experience of seeing the words “We’re special” scratched in tarmac on a Canberra road. The work highlights the real private space that exists within all of us, where everything goes one way, a space flexible and able to meet our personal ideals. The title stresses a need for assurance, for an understanding of ourselves and those around us, while the territorial element of these words acts as a haunting reminder of recurrently restricted perspective. The end of the 20th Century saw a generation of people travelling to continents that before were out of reach and globalisation has reformed the world to be smaller and easier to navigate. The snow-capped mountain tent mimics a love for travel, but ultimately highlights the complexities within any environment. As Walker contends, “We exist in a real and fictional space in our head, and travel is perhaps just an extension of that.”