Palimpsest
Palimpsest is a paean to nature.
During one of my long walks along the ancient Ridgeway path, sleeping in a tent, I woke to the exuberant sounds of the morning chorus. I was overcome by a powerful feeling of the inter-connectedness of everything. Tinged with both joy and anxiety, this was an extraordinarily optimistic and spiritual experience.
In our hubris, we as humans set ourselves apart from nature. Yet we are a part of it. Nature is preeminent. Nature has a permanence, a mutability, an effervescence, and ultimately a continuity that will endure long after our short spell on the planet.
In this work, the Ridgeway is both a motif and a metaphor. In response to walking the path, reflecting on the past, creating plans for the future and being in the present, I made photographic images. I also created a path made of words, inspired by my observations made during two continuous walks, one in each direction. The wordpath takes the form of the topographical shape of the Ridgeway itself.
For me the path serves as a metaphor for human time, echoing with footsteps past and luring us into the future. Palimpsest records a journey of reflection and observation. Traces are left as palimpsests, not only of us upon nature, but also of nature upon us.
The wordpath (detail can be seen on the UWE installation page):
