The Roll of Emplacement is a postal project. It is an 8-foot long drift of great variety and movement, a collective artwork of path and pattern.
The paper scroll was prepared by measuring eight individual, one foot-lengths and adding a common horizontal line representing the surface of the earth and our relationship to each other.
Starting its life in Edinburgh, it was sent by post from artist to artist, across England and Scotland, becoming a group map of foot and root, branch, ground and sky, of emplacement. Responding to the brief with pencil, paint, ink, natural pigment and thread, a co-operative artwork was created, one that contains both individual responses and marks, and at the same time forms a collaborative whole.
Eight Walking the Land artists from across Scotland and England participated in The Roll of Emplacement
As an Artist Collective, Walking the Land participants researched, pondered on, and discussed Emplacement for many months. Working individually, in small groups, and collectively via our First Tuesday Cafes (online), we bandied ideas around and sparked off each other. The Roll of Emplacement was just one of the projects which resulted from this rich exchange.
Tamsin Grainger on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
Mine was the first panel. It represents my walking experience of moving over long distances by foot, at once a rooting-in and a movement through place which releases ideas and makes connections. It is a tree of my walking life, an arboreal trek of thoughts, and a mind-map that is positioned in time. It nods to old maps which used image, line and words to give a holistic sense of emplacement.
Artwork by (left to right) Tamsin Grainger, Julius Smit, Richard Keating and Rachel McDonnell
Julius Smit’s work, which was made in Eastbourne, East Sussex, is a movement, a spiraling into an emptiness. There is a spaciousness about it, and it speaks of “homing”, and of “the line” moving “to firmer ground”. Responding to the previous work, it contains a network of diversions and deviations. Smit wrote, “As I worked on my contribution I thought how important this approach was to a collaborative work, where the positive nature of slowness and gestation was the very antithesis to a world framed by speed and immediacy.” You can view Julius’ latest zine here.
Julius Smit on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
Richard Keating’s work was made on Star Hill outside Nailsworth. It emplaces a tree using pencil and pale colours, responding to the first two work by extracting images of direction and the compass that have been placed beside tiles of time. The bark rubbing of the Acer Negundo ‘Variegatum’ in the upper section, complements his foot stepping across the base of the panel. Keating asked, “What will the Roll reveal? What has it seen? What has it become since it left on its travels?” Richard’s blog.
Rachel McDonnell on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
Rachel McDonnell’s part in the Roll of Emplacement is text-based, an intense movement of colour through words. The shapes and swaying of the body in motion are conveyed via the subtle changes and variation in hue. Resembling the fronds of the Weeping Willow, she creates a verbal image through the use of blues and greens above the ground line and earthy colours below. It offers much to ponder on while walking, and references “the gradual accretion of knowledge”. McDonnell is based near Stroud in Gloucestershire. Rachel’s website.
Janette Kerr on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
Janette Kerr’s work is more abstract and the substance of Brindister, West Burrafirth, Shetland is literally emplaced, giving it body and texture. A maelstrom of blue, silver and grey, it relates directly to McDonnell’s and other’s work, but has a quality quite different from those which go before it on the Roll. With splatters in patterns of light and dark, it conjures the movement of wind, and is rooted in place. Kerr writes that her “focus is so often on the sea and hills and clouds” but this time she collected “seaweed, grasses, moss, twigs, mud, earth, … then used these to create … the marks on the paper … part-printed and pressed, part-drawn, part-painted …” You can find more of Janette’s work here.
Ruth Broadbent on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
Ruth Broadbent received the Roll from Scotland, all the way down in Banbury, Oxfordshire in England after Kerr had to run after the mail van to persuade it to take a parcel. “… based on an ink shadow drawing I had done from finds on a First Friday* foraging walk. It fitted the roll exactly …”, Broadbent writes, and hers has a deceptive simplicity. Looking closely, there are subtle variations in colour and tone, and together they appear to resemble a plant branch whose flowers and leaves are actually growing on the page. More by Ruth Broadbent.
From left to right, artwork by Jenny Staff and Zoe Ashbrook on The Roll of Emplacement
Jenny Staff’s cellular ‘path’ meanders from below ground through the surface and beyond. Or maybe it moves from above to underneath. Harking back to the emptiness of Smidt’s interior, Staff’s sparse central area both contains the possibilities of air, and also surrounds a precious place. She writes about a daily dog walk to “A circular space filled with gorse, carrion and woodpeckers. From which you can see the South Downs and on a clear day out to the Isle of Wight”, and says of her process, “I made this work in the same amount of time it would take me to do this walk, step by step - creating a meditative time for myself at home - black tea dropped from the end of a pencil for each step”. More by Jenny Staff.
The final section consists of two collaged panels by Zoe Ashbrook. Deep layers of colour counterbalance the palette of previous artists, and the texture speaks of the myriad components of earth and place — human and other-than-human. A thin, black and convoluted route winds between the halves of this work and embodies the journey that the Roll had taken to reach her. About this, she comments, “I felt a real sense of travel embedded within the roll. A history recorded through the previous addresses crossed out, the packaging which had been cut and reworked each time it travelled.”
Richard Keating on The Roll of Emplacement - detail
This work is available for display, supplemented by accompanying work and words.
*The Walking the Land artist’s collective gather on the first Friday of each month to walk together, in place or remotely, and then share work, often developing it to be exhibited or published. You might like Squaring the Circle and First Friday Walk, Psarades
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Watermarks Assemblage by Walking the Land artists
Title image by Richard Keating. All others by Tamsin Grainger.