Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Julian Opie, Bruce Nauman, Francis Alÿs, Marina Abramovic, Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Melanie Manchot, Tim Robinson, Carey Young, Tim Brennan, Mike Collier, Brian Thompson, Alec Finlay, Chris Drury, Dan Holdsworth, plan b, Wrights & Sites, Richard Wentworth, Simon Pope, James Hugonin, Rachael Clewlow, Rachel Reupke, Atul Bhalla, Sarah Cullen, walkwalkwalk, Tim Knowles, Bradley Davies, Brendan Stuart Burns, Ingrid Pollard, , Pat Naldi & Wendy Kirkup, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir & Mark Wilson,, Tracy Hanna, Jeremy Wood
Walk On The Atkinson’s new major exhibition brings together nearly 40 artists who make work by undertaking a journey on foot, and in doing so, they all stake out new artistic territories
Walk On is the first exhibition to examine the astonishingly varied ways in which artists since the 1960s have undertaken a seemingly universal act – taking a walk – as their means to create new types of art. The exhibition offers an as-yet-unwritten history of recent art practice. It proposes that, across all four of the last decades, artists have worked as kinds of explorers, whether making their marks on rural wildernesses or acting as urban expeditionaries.
They do so whether using the city street as their studio or the landscape as their natural habitat – as a place to dwell in and dwell upon rather than represent in conventional ways. Artists such as Richard Long have crossed countries and continents to create works, leaving traces of their movements on the land itself.
Some walking artists only exhibit documents from their journeys, whether photographs, texts or artifacts. For them, the walk undertaken is itself the artwork – as a kind of performance over time – and anything else only evidence or documentation. Others, such as Bruce Nauman, have explored the infinite grammatical possibilities of walking: how we walk shows the world who we are.
Others still, such as Marina Abramovic, have walked on historic sites – undertaking an epic journey across the length of the Great Wall of China. It argues that from land art to conceptual art, and from street photography to the essay-film, much of the important art of our time has been created through an act of walking.
The exhibition runs from Saturday 12 April – Saturday 9 August at The Atkinson, Sefton’s new home of art, literature, music, theatre, history and more. For more information please visit theatkinson.co.uk or call box office on 01704 533333.
Walk On is curated by Cynthia Morrison-Bell, Mike Collier of WALK in partnership with NGCA and supported by the Arts Council England.
Organised and toured by Art Circuit Touring Exhibitions.