Tag Archives: landscape

Laroche a.k.a. Luce Choules talking walking

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Coming to the final day of the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference (2024) that has included a walk from the city of Girona to where we are now in Banyoles, Andrew Stuck is with visual artist and writer, Laroche a.k.a. Luce Choules. They have just given the keynote this morning, a performance lecture, as they call it, described in the conference programme as ‘Material Fields: surveys, mappings and counter-cartographies’ – a live performance using a format of projected imagery and narrated script to invite an audience on a poetic journey across the natural, managed and urban territories of Europe and beyond. 

In our conversation we discuss Laroche’s interest in fieldwork and how they have established a network of fellow thinkers to explore ‘fieldwork as research and art form’, as well as how they compose their performance lectures. 

24’23” 11.4MB

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Marlene Creates talking walking

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In May 2025, multi-award-winning Canadian photographer and environmental artist Marlene Creates is in Brighton, England, and Andrew Stuck takes the opportunity to meet her there.

They are walking in woodland not far from Preston Park train station and Andrew invites her to compare their surroundings to where she lives on the island of Newfoundland off the east coast of mainland Canada.

Marlene uses the 6-acre patch of old-growth boreal forest where she lives as an outdoor studio and now spends much of her time there observing how it changes with the seasons, photographing what she sees, and writing poetry to describe the unseen.

She’s been sharing this forest with primary school children, inviting them to go on multidisciplinary guided walks to learn about the nature of their local ecosystem, as well as concurrently bringing back to light terms in the Newfoundland dialect through video-poems.

Andrew and Marlene chat about her unusual field research back in the 1980s, when she came to Britain and rode thousands of miles on a 1968 Vespa motor scooter, and they discuss her walking art practice. The podcast ends with her reading a list poem composed of over 100 verbs that describe ways of walking. We retreated indoors to make the recording of Marlene reciting the poem. She also shared other words and phrases related to walking that she found in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English that she would like to be brought back into common parlance.

39’43” 21MB

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Feature Image credit:  Bernard Fougères

Anna Viola Hallberg talking walking

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Andrew Stuck has come to Sweden to an area 3 hours drive north of Stockholm, at the northern tip of the Stockholm Archipelago on the Baltic coast to interview Anna Viola Hallberg a video maker turned Walking Artist, the curator of the WAP coalition of walking artists – a residency based at Björkö Konstnod / BKN .

His trip is part of The Walking Arts in Local Communities (WALC) 4 year project that is part funded by the EU Creative Europe programme, as the WAP coalition of walking artists has been nominated as a node. These nodes are to extend the network beyond the original seven partners in five European countries who are promoting walking art within their local communities. The WAP coalition of walking artists is relatively new but has already gained significant recognition through the efforts of Anna Viola and a cohort of almost 200 artists.

Andrew has had the opportunity of staying with Anna Viola and taking part within their residency for a week before he interviews her. It’s a Sunday morning at the start of the Swedish summer holidays at the beginning of July.

34’42” 16.3MB

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Matt Gilbert talking walking

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Matt Gilbert, the author of the ‘Richly Evocative’ blog has had a collection of poetry published recently called ‘Street Sailing’.

Andrew Stuck and Matt are on a walk together through Dulwich Woods part of the Great North Wood, an area where Matt volunteered to undertake conservation work.  

Frequently walking through the woods has been key to much of Matt’s creative writing process and in their conversation, Matt talks about his approach to writing prose as well as to writing poetry, and gives insight into the contemporary poets who have influenced and inspired him.

Although brought up in Bristol, Matt spent much of his life in West Norwood, what one newspaper described as “an anonymous suburb of South London” – a remark that has rattled Matt and prompted him to write the ‘Richly Evocative’ blog.  

22’57” 10.8MB

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Emily Wilkinson talking walking

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Graphic designer, illustrator. art and health practitioner, turned Walking Artist, writer and Desire Lines podcast producer, Emily Wilkinson is now studying for a PhD researching therapeutic landscapes.

Based in north east Wales, it is not practical for Andrew Stuck to meet her in person and go for a walk, and instead they record an interview over a Zoom call.

Perhaps it is a little indulgent on Andrew’s part to be interviewing a fellow podcaster, but in doing so Emily reveals a lot about the value she places on writing (as a portable art form), and on listening and recording conversations. She believes Walking Art can contribute to building confidence in the young and generating creative opportunities for marginal groups as well as for others.  30’15” 14.6MB

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Richard White talking walking

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Although they’ve known each other for over a decade, it has not been easy for Andrew Stuck to find an opportunity to record a conversation with Richard White. An opportune moment arises as Richard comes to London for his granddaughter’s birthday and he joins Andrew Stuck on a walk together in Nonsuch Park on the outskirts of south west London. 

Richard was an early pioneer in producing located media, uncovering overlooked or intentionally erased histories. 

Walking is integral to every stage in Richard’s creative practice: he organises and hosts group walks as part of his research, and in recovering, processing and embedding memory. This embodied engagement with place and landscape is also key to the development and placement of media; sound is essential to the live experience and through which his audiences experience any final GPS located composition. Although still using locative media apps, Richard’s practice has evolved using handheld blue tooth speakers and silent disco kit as part of a live performative walking experience.

Richard recently co-edited and contributed to “Breaking the Dead Silence” a collection of essays published by Liverpool University Press on memoryscapes and obscured histories in the aftermath of the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol. He recently undertook a research fellowship in south Australia walking the thread of empire and botany.  Richard’s current project  ‘Finding Country’  attends to the landscape and built environment of North Somerset (UK), terraformed by enslavers and colonial extraction. The project is a ‘walking-with’ the legacies of wealth extracted from colonised lands and peoples manifested in the English countryside and country house. In the project Richard draws on and seeks to articulate his walking research in Adelaide, South Australia, walking and asking questions, re-telling stories back into the landscape

41’57” 19.7MB

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Janice Jensen talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is in Sweden at Björkö-Konstnod (BKN) in the northern Stockholm archipelago to join the Walking as Practice artist residency of which he is going to be part. Among the artists there was Janice Jensen from Germany, whose work Andrew has come across since Janice was shortlisted for the 2023 Marŝarto Award for Walking Art. Janice has just demonstrated a “Drawing by Walking” mechanism that she has created as the first step in an elaborate process to draw the walks she makes.  Their conversation takes place on a walk along an unsealed road early on, on a July evening.     20’24” 9.6MB

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Molly Wagner talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is walking through the streets and around the battlements of the fortified city of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. He is in the company of Molly Wagner an American who has lived in Australia for many years.  Neither of them are certain of finding their way. Molly is the author of “No Trespassing”, a sumptuous photographic journal of a number of long walks that she made through urban, suburban and rural New South Wales. They are both attending the Walking Art and Relational Geographies conference organised by Clara Gari of Nau Côclea, at which Molly will be talking about the formation and growth of Australian Walking Artists, for which she is a convenor. 27’25” 12.9 MB

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Henry Fletcher talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is on Sutton Heath in Suffolk with Henry Fletcher, author, way finder and wilderness guide turned walking artist. He is fairly confident that he is not going to get lost as Henry has more than a decade’s experience in guiding people in Iceland in much harsher conditions than they are encountering on a Spring day in May.

With the help of Jay Simpson a fellow trail maker and workshop facilitator they authored the Banff Mountain Literature Award-winning “Wayfinding in the Westfjords” along with a companion trails map and two other guides to the local ecology and walking conditions. The books include reflections and responses from scores of participants who have taken part in artistic residences and trail restoration workshops that Henry and Jay devised and led . By raising money for the publication through a kickstarter crowd funding campaign they were able to hire a book designer, a botanical illustrator, as well as translating the books. 

It turns out that although they have created far more than a walking guide with a book filled with beautiful photographs and artwork, Henry as a self-proclaimed way finder is not someone inclined to use a guidebook or to follow a well marked trail, so Andrew is intrigued how in creating this suite of books and map may have modified Henry’s own practice. Similarly Henry is an enthusiastic supporter for the world trails network, for which he created a film festival and a series of artist talks.

32’31” 15.2MB

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Image credits: Julie Wegner, Jay Simpson, Henry Fletcher

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Kim Goldsmith talking walking

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Andrew Stuck planned meeting up with Australian Kim Goldsmith sometime in advance, knowing that she would be returning from a residency on Skye with her partner and would only have a short time in London. They were staying in a hotel just south of Kings Cross, so Andrew met them there, with the intention of finding quiet spaces nearby in which to record an interview. Andrew accompanied Kim on a walk towards the Camley Street Nature reserve and Old Saint Pancras Churchyard, both of which he assumed would be quiet, calm spaces.

Kim is a sound recordist and a digital storyteller, and considers herself an environmental artist, like others, whom Andrew has recorded who have a practice in sound, it would seem inevitable that wherever they go sounds and noises intrude on their conversation. The interview with Kim was no exception, as you will discover.

The good news is that Kim took it in very good spirits! What could possibly go wrong? 22’58” 10.8 MB

Andrew Howe KV Goldsmith July2023 walking on Whixall Moss
Kim by the Wambuul Macquarie River June2022
Kim listening to kelp Skye Aug2024

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Daniella Turbin talking walking

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Andrew Stuck has travelled to Wolverhampton to meet Daniella Turbin, whose walking art practice includes drawing and photography, to talk about her year long project “A Place to Return To”. We take a walk for an hour beside a canal that runs from Wolverhampton to Stoke-on-Trent. For Daniella, this is just a short walk, as starting in May 2022 she began walking alone for 367 days through the whole of Britain on a route that touched every county and would link up with other walking artists, with the overall intention of finding out more about the country since the pandemic. 

Her year long adventure, apparently went without mishap, unlike their walk beside the canal. During their walk Andrew’s recorder stopped and they were unsure when it had stopped, so tried to remember what they may have already discussed. They passed through a group of men who were taking drugs and drinking alcohol and were overtaken by another man, wheeling a giant tractor tyre. Intrusive industrial sounds from the neighbouring warehouses interrupted their conversation but they were lucky as they occasionally entered tunnels in which the ambience changed significantly, and they were able to talk without raising their voices. 26’57” 12.6MB

Photo credit: Images from the exhibition by David Rowan

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Mick Douglas talking walking

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Andrew Stuck is with Mick Douglas, a self-confessed, long-distance solo hiker. He has worked as an artist researcher into creative practice at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, for three decades. Much of his work was around the interaction of people within modes of transport, comparing practices in cities in Australia to cities in India.

We are walking along the uneven shingle beach of the Great Prespa Lake in western Macedonia in north west Greece, as Mick has come to present a piece of work at the Walking Arts Encounters there. 

He’s here to talk about and demonstrate a piece he developed for an unusual festival in New Zealand in which he takes a solo hike for four days within a shipping container. If that’s not unusual enough, he goes on to tell Andrew how he is hosting and ghosting walks around a 40 acre block of land. He is developing an ecological practice in which he invites people to engage with their surroundings in part, listening to commentary that he’s created as a sound walk. 25’42’ 12MB

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