JULY 2022 UPDATE TrigpointKernow

I thought it was about time I should update and share what I have been doing since completing the 100 walks across Cornwall between the trigpoints.

It was a real marathon to finish back in November 2020 and then there was another lockdown.

I took some time out and got busy with landscaping and garden design projects which is how I earn income here in Cornwall. Having done what I set out to do – walk the majority of the interior of Cornwall -there was a bit of an anti-climax as often finishing points in projects create.

Having generated a vast archive of digital images, sound recordings and interviews as well as drawn and rubbed pieces from the walks, countless found objects and 100 packages of boot soil, I started to think about how to somehow order and archive the material with a view to exhibit the work.

This has taken considerable time.

It feels important to show the entire work together somewhere, if there is somewhere big enough to house and display the 100 works of art, found objects and soil packages for germinating seeds…

A friend who also is an artist said to me perhaps the work should be split into the 5 areas of Cornwall. This resonated with me since the work is place/site specific and this would neatly tie to the 5 sound symphonies that I am slowly working on*. It just seems like a really big task, 5 different exhibitions, 5 different locations 5 different marketing ‘campaign’s’ … ugh!… I need help! It feels better to have it all shown somewhere in one go, boom. The wow factor would be there.

SO, the idea would be to show the entire body of work hung over a vinyl outline of Cornwall relating to where I walked, the objects I found, the soil that was in my boots; geography, geology, sociology, ecology, history all layered up and condensed down into an artboard, ‘found treasure’ and the very earth of Kernow with seeds growing away.

And so I have scaled up a map of Cornwall, overlaid the lines that I walked (Strava kindly mapped every single walk with a red line), added place names and played with this graphic so I could see what size exhibition space I would require to show this (its big, essentially 16m x 33m or 52ft x 108ft). This graphic took literally months in my spare time to perfect. I have some experience in exhibition design and digital communication which helped me create and visualise this accurately and to scale. I have not added pictures of these yet as I have put my exhibition proposal to a gallery and am looking at other options, promising not to release any material that might form a part of an exhibition.

*In the meantime I have been learning about music theory and how to combine sound and melody and harmony to create an immersive sound piece for each area of Cornwall: Isles of Scilly, W Cornwall, Mid Cornwall, SE Cornwall and North Cornwall. I am learning to play the piano with grades and music composition, as well as working towards grade 8 on the violin, why? well I feel as though the symphonic soundpieces will have more credibility if the work is undergirded with solid learning and theory. From this I am then taking the interviews I had with the beautiful people of Cornwall from all walks of life and fusing these with the field recordings, my improvised violin pieces I did on the walks, and scored music to create something unique and special about Cornish Place. This, as I’m sure you can imagine, is taking a long time. I am currently working on the Isles of Scilly piece which has wreck stories, gig rowing, seabirds and folksong fusions gleaned from my 2 visits there (St Martins has a single trigpoint)

I am also finding a tiny little bit of time to prepare some of the earliest walks for display, and it has been wonderful to go back to the beginning of the project and work with the material I collected, particularly as at the start I collected everything individually -separate rubbings, drawings, even pressed flowers (see below) which I have started to put together from a compositional point of view. This has also thrown up questions of authenticity as the later artboards were created on the spot ‘en plein air’ so to speak and so it feels odd labouring over arrangements many years after the event of the walk, but I guess this is just evolution of an art practice.

Here are two examples:

Above: Walk 6 Goonhilly – Tregonning Hill

Above: Walk 5 Predannack Head – Goonhilly

OK, so there we have it, that’s what I have been up to in my art practice, it has sort of become a music practice. Perhaps its just short term, but I am so inspired by contemporary composers and multi media artists that I want to position myself and the work I do in the broadest possible category of the ‘arts’.

When I feel I am ready to share something as a taster I will post something. Until then I am going to plod on, chipping away, trying to do and be the best I can be with where I am at and with what I am doing 🙂

Thanks for reading

Ian