walking

WALK! at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt || My First International Exhibition /  by ellie berry

WALK!

18 FEBRUARY – 22 MAY 2022

The act of walking as a social phenom­enon has gained renewed impor­tance in the twenty-first century. The group exhi­bi­tion WALK! at the SCHIRN provides an overview of walking as a prac­tice in contem­po­rary art produc­tion—a facet that has so far been rarely consid­ered. It exam­ines contem­po­rary explo­rations and expan­sions of Walking Art, which had its origins in the 1960s move­ments of Mini­malism, Land Art, and Concep­tual Art.

The SCHIRN presents more than forty inter­na­tional artists whose work incor­po­rates walking as an essen­tial element. Some one hundred photographs, video works, collages, draw­ings, paint­ings, and sculp­tures, as well as live perfor­mances and partic­i­pa­tory projects in public space aesthet­i­cally inter­twine walking with the chal­lenges of our time, reflect on current debates around issues such as glob­al­iza­tion and climate change and explore forms of protest and demon­stra­tion.

ARTISTS

Bani Abidi, Yuji Agematsu, Allora & Calza­dilla, Fran­cis Alÿs, Daniel Beer­ste­cher, Ellie Berry, James Bridle, Tiffany Chung, Jesse Darling, Michael Dean, Sebastián Díaz Mora­les, Anders Dick­son, Flaneur, Hamish Fulton, Rahima Gambo, Birke Gorm, Hamza Hall­oubi, David Hammons, Yolande Harris, Mona Hatoum, Fabian Herken­hoener, Hiwa K, Michael Höpf­ner, Jan Hostett­ler, Regina José Galindo, Kubra Khademi, Bouchra Khalili, Kimso­oja, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Minouk Lim, Carole McCourt, Helen Mirra, Sohei Nishino, Carmen Papa­lia, Signe Pierce & Alli Coates, Sascha Pohle, Pope.L, Hans Scha­bus, Miae Son, Cheyney Thomp­son, Milica Tomić

In 2019 I went to Greece for a conference - it was the first conference I wrote a paper for, my first international conference, and my first “walking art” conference. Looking back, I can see how formative an experience that trip was - I was almost a year into my research masters, but was only starting to vaguely understand what it was that I had actually signed up to undertake. From those ten days of work/walk-shops and talks, I found my way into examining experiences in more critical ways, and redefined what being an artist meant to me.

My paper presentation was on the last day of the conference, in a small town hall that was only cooler than being out in the greek sunshine in a theoretical way. The actuality of all the bodies probably negated any cooling, but at least I no one was getting sun burnt. Being such a stuffy atmosphere, I didn’t want to make it worse by only reading out sections of my paper - so I included some of my own work, and talked about the experiences that led me to trying to make work in new ways, comparing it to other Irish artists that had gone before me and had similar reactions when depicting the Irish landscape.

This is how Fiona saw my work, and how, eighteen months later, she emailed me to let me know about a show about walking art she was involved with. It was still in the planning stage, so we were just opening up the conversation. More time passed, and each step in the process to having work in the show passed by. Even at the end of 2021, when I was sending in the high resolution files of my work, I didn’t fully believe it would happen. Even seeing a gallery floor-plan mock-up. But my name is on the website, and I’ve booked my flights over to see it.

To have my work in the same show as some names I really admire is - well, maybe this is the part that makes it hard to believe.

I’m excited. Here’s the page on the website.

I’ll be over for the opening (18th of Feb), and will share installation photos after that.

Wish me luck!