MOLLUSCS HUNT WIZARDS
Molluscs Hunt Wizards, 2014–17
Multimedia body of work, travel research, and drawings
Molluscs Hunt Wizards is a body of work that correlates landscape, identity, and personal narrative, exploring how physical boundaries and markers form our sense of place. The project looks at natural structures used for practical navigation alongside the invisible, palpable traces of human experience.
Research:
During the beginning stages of the work I spent time revisiting areas of west Cornwall that were most familiar to me, before travelling from London, via Beijing, to the Mongolian Gobi to learn how nomadic herders read and navigate the harsh, epic desert terrain. I then returned by rail to Beijing to fly to Australia, where using both Melbourne and Sydney as bases, I made excursions into the central red deserts and the World Heritage Willandra Lakes region
I met with artists and rangers who provided access to deserts and plains that seemed opposite to the landscape of Cornwall, collecting stories and local knowledge of boundaries and landscape markers. Within this framework, molluscs and wizards acts as a metaphor for gradual versus dynamic modes of action, seeking a deeper understanding of identity and personal power through shifting perspectives.
Acknowledgements and blog:
The 2014 work and travel was funded through the sales of artworks and a crowdfunding campaign. All those who sponsored and supported me are acknowledged HERE. As rewards, I offered badges, drawings and postcards sent during the journey, accompanied by a project blog, which documented experiences and findings.
‘The landscape had quickly become more barren, the Gers thinned out, as did the livestock. What vegetation we saw was becoming less green and more brown. These plants must still be alive, somewhere, but they seemed dead. A bolt broke on the front right wheel of our Furgon. Tempers were being tested, particularly as we had taken some wrong turns and needed to double back on ourselves, covering more kilometres than we wanted.
Back on the road and we continued through the ever-increasing wasteland. The ground became looser and sand hills appeared. They became larger and more frequent and so our going became tougher with the softening ground. A number of times we all had to leap out of the van to give Turuu a better chance of getting through the sand. The sun was getting lower in the sky and we began looking around and wondering where we should camp. Turuu, however, wasn't prepared to stop yet. He was insistent that we keep going.
After another hour the sand hills had grown on one side of us to be well up to twenty or thirty metres in height. From a white/grey colour they had become more pink. Soon the dunes gave way to pink cliffs, which grew again in height. The sun was close to the horizon and still we drove, our Furgon's shadow trailing long behind us. - Extract from blog.
To read the blog please click HERE.
Read An Artist-Led Adventure, an article by Stephen Palmer for a-n.
