Lydia Halcrow
matter maps – walking the Taw
matter maps – walking the Taw documents Lydia Halcrow’s practice that explores the complexities of place through the case study of the Taw Estuary in North Devon. The artwork is created through a series of embodied processes fostering slow walking as a disruptive methodology.
Central to the project are notions of the entangled nature of our bodies in this and every place, the residues of our increasingly troubled human relationships with(in) our landscapes, and forming other sensorial ways of knowing, being and recording place.
The project has taken up Tim Ingold’s invitation to ‘follow the materials’, working with notions of Jane Bennett’s vibrant matter. I position the artwork in relation to Springgay and Truman’s Counter Cartographies, offering alternative material maps of this place that record the traces of human imprint and debris encountered in the everyday, at a point of rising seas and looming climactic tipping points.
Biography
Lydia Halcrow is an artist, researcher and teacher. Her recently completed practice-based PhD explored collaborative working processes with a landscape developed through slow walking and sensorial practices. The body of artwork that emerges forms mark-making techniques to record trace within a landscape, with a focus on the materials, textures and human debris encountered. The body of work was recently awarded the Burton Environmental Artist Award and is held in public and private collections in the UK and Internationally.