Tag Archives: landscapes

Hyper-real Landscapes

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I was just discussing how invisible my large pregnancy bump appears to be to the vast majority of the population. This led to a conversation about whether modern day society is made up of people lacking in good manners (I sound so old), or if modern day society is made up of people so consumed by themselves and their man-made distractions, namely their phones (she says, writing this from a smart phone), that they are simply blind to the world around them.

Either way, it was interesting to consider the thick blanket of fog that covered pretty much the entire UK this morning. A friend took this fabulous photo looking east off London Bridge this morning…

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I love that, in such a dense urban environment, so much ‘everything’ is shrouded by nature presenting us with so much ‘nothing’.

It made me consider hyper-real environments, what we need to do to make that modern day society sit up and smell the coffee; that is, become alert to the wonders that surround them on a daily basis. Then another friend posted this image on Facebook…

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Perhaps we’re all thinking the same thing!?

So excited I could pop!

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Sensory Mapping

I’ve just submitted my review of Emma Moxey‘s current exhibition, All the Familiar Landmarks, to the Oxford Mail. The review will be in the paper on Thursday, and the exhibition is currently on display in the Gallery at the Old Fire Station until 30 March.

Anyway, I won’t go on about the exhibition now as you can read about it in the paper on Thursday (needless to say that it is damn good and I urge you to go see it); however, in part cap-doffing admiration, and in part confession I’d like to point people in the direction of a really great interview by Samuel Stensland (aka Mr Pint Writing) who interviewed Emma about All the Familiar Landmarks for the OFS blog… you see I’ve nicked some of her descriptions from this interview for my review – really hope that’s ok!?

In other news, discovering Emma Moxey’s work, and finding out about a recently established project called Cities & Memory that has been set up to map the real and imagined sounds of the world, I am getting toe-tinglingly excited about the potential to pull together some really brilliant artists all working in a different areas of sensory mapping.

Those artists include (but aren’t limited to):

Emma Moxey
Kate McLean – Sensory Maps
Sarah Mayhew Craddock **ahem**
Stuart Fowkes – Cities and Memory
Victoria Henshaw – Smell and the City

I’m thinking that this could make for a really interesting pan-Oxford project, potentially working in collaboration with Science Oxford, OCM, and Modern Art Oxford (only these organisations don’t know this yet! ). Watch this space!

“Our most precious moments of travel are taken home not through our luggage, not through our cameras… but through our senses.”
Anita Mendiratta, 2010