Milesands

Performance, photography, text
2010

Carrying a large bag of sand from Southend-on-Sea, the artist walked towards the centre of London distributing one handful every 2000 steps (around one mile), relating to historic milestones seen dotted around the country.

The sand at each mile was set as a small, site-specific, installation. Because the exact location, territory and materiality of each milepoint was unknown until the two thousandth step was taken there is a chance quality and celebration of the everyday, mundane and ‘dull’ landscape detail rather than the composed, gestural study. The small site-specific milesands are sculpted interjections concerning landscape on a minute scale. Also at play is the immediate artistic response to locale the artist faces, an intuitive mark making exercise as instinctive reaction, where sand is the material and the urban site the canvas.

The milesands were photographed as document of the event. The sands did not take long to assimilate into the environment so this documentation is all which remains. These images form a record of the journey outliving the transient, personal experience of the walk to transfigure the event into object.