Carte Blanche: Walking and thinking about Maps. 2022

This exhibition took place in two galleries and an Artist Book was produced called Panopticon. (link to book page.)

The work looked so different when hung in different spaces.  Shown in  Skipton and later in Settle, the hangings, oil painting and collage were accompanied by stone carvings, drawings and prints. The theme developed during the Covid pandemic 2019 – 2022. Based on maps and mapping, an agreed focus with Mark Butler, I  soon became more interested in walks and the way that the Ordnance Survey with its clear and unambiguous symbols has helped walkers over the last 70 years. Then I began to think about Google and the way we have become used to recording our walks on Google Earth. The shapes of these circular walks were interesting to me and I focussed on these and on the Ordnance Survey key symbols, to develop my work. 

The Ordnance Survey was a part of the British army and it’s function was to make accurate maps for deployment of the army and protection from invasion.

Shown in Skipton, the hangings took centre stage. They are frottages made by rubbing black crayon over cardboard shapes underneath the paper. I deliberately disrupted the clarity of the original symbols to reflect attitudes to order, truth and clarity in the C21.

In Settle the work was displayed on the wall, which was newly “lime washed” during the renovations of the old house.

Top centre is the collage of symbols removed from the O.S. maps, together with some highly disruptive arrows. In my work here logic, meaning and coherence are taken away and we have a blank map. Powerful people can do as they please, hence the title “Carte Blanche.”  Maps were generally about delineating property, control of populations and the use of land.

These are wire shapes, drawings in wire of the recorded walks. Underneath the paper they can be used to make frottages. suspended in front, they cast shadows and create a multilayered image. I was thinking about all the walks we have done and how we will probably never do all of  them again. They are not found in books,

The editing controls, which can be used while recording walks or studying parts of the earth on Google, are powerful indeed. Is it true that Google is richer than many small countries?

Google uses an assortment of satellites to track changes and monitor the earth. 

I have called Google a Panoptican, an all-seeing eye. Panopticon was first used in C17 to describe the controls on the population imposed by Charles 2nd. It was later used as the name of a prison control system invented by Jeremy Bentham. A single guard could constantly watch all the prisoners from a central position.

The Sleep of Reason, oil on canvas. The disrupted people who crowd together as if waiting at a border, seem possessed by the same demons as Goya was in his print of  1799 which he called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

Some years ago I did a stone carving course at Craven College and I still have the tools. This was hard work though. It is 1 meter long but it was completed in a year.

This stone carving is also about footpaths, but in a slightly different way. 

Desire lines or desire paths are unofficial paths made by walkers who wish to make a shorter route from A to B or a different route. Often found in cities, where landscape planners have favoured a design idea rather than what is best for people. Routes planned to keep traffic flowing can make walking very unpleasant.

Recently planners are trying to favour walkers by waiting to see the unofficial paths and then making them official.

In the countryside, desire paths can make habitats difficult for nature to thrive.

I was thinking about way markers and signposts and their history. There are many old mile posts for travellers although they have been superseded by the satellite system on your phone.

Some details from the hanging paper banners.