‘A Grey & Pleasant Land?’ – contribution to a deep mapping project

A background note. It is difficult to document ‘my’ contribution to the small ‘work pachage’ of a large-scale academic project for which I was responsible. Firstly, at our local level it was very much a team effort with the artist Jane Bailey, in particular, playing a major collaborative and trans-disciplinary role at critical times. For […]

Notes Towards A Deep Mapping

Notes Towards A Deep Mapping (2012)  is, hopefully, the final extension of the Debatable Lands project. This exploratory piece – which consists of a ‘map’ made up of sixty-three images plus a key – was first shown in shadows traces undercurrents (October 16-November 16, 2012) at the Katherine E Nash Gallery at the Regis Centre for Art (East), […]

Two dimensional aspects of deep mappings

Two dimensional works and drawings, much of it resulting from/relating to the Borders deep mapping projects Most of the wall-based work I have made since the late 1990s relates, directly or indirectly, to some aspect of deep mapping. Much of it becomes material for the books themselves, directly or indirectly, and is part of the […]

Deep mapping as an ‘essaying’ of place

(Illustrated talk given at the Writing seminar at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Friday 9th July, 2010) Jane Rendell has invited us to explore different sites of experimental writing practices across art, architecture, cultural geography, performance and poetics – focusing on such terms as ‘art-writing’, ‘place-writing’, ‘site-writing’, etc – and to consider the specifically spatial dimensions of […]

The undervalued third: reflections on enacting ecosophy through ‘deep’ or ‘narrative’ mappings

It’s worried me for a while now that, although there’s some understanding of the interaction of the social and environmental ecologies among those who might claim to be working ‘ecosophically’ in this area of ‘mappings, there seems little or no understanding of the necessary psychic challenges involved. This might seem odd, given where Guattari was […]

Locating the Gothic – text for the paper ‘Mapping Spectral Traces’

NB – For a review of the conference at which this paper was presented see Locating the Gothic Conference and Festival: a South African Review (17 Nov 2014) by Miss Esthie Hugo. I have just attended Locating the Gothic http://locatingthegothic.weebly.com, a very rich and wonderful interweaving of a two day academic conference and a wide range of related Gothic events, all […]

‘Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now’ 

The exhibition runs from 26 April – 29 July 2023 and is at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds.  An online catalogue is available at: https://issuu.com/sabgallery/docs/arcadia_for_all_catalogue_full_low_res_pdf Somewhat to my surprise (and much to my delight), I was invited to contribute a work to this exhibition by one of the curators, Dr […]

Quiet Conversations: Kathleen Jamie / Erin Kavanagh (Meadowsweet)

Kathleen Jamie. Scots poet and essayist who in 2021 became Scotland’s forth Makar. The key reference here is to her poem Meadowsweet, which appears in Waterlight: Selected Poems (Saint Paul, Minnesota, Graywolf Press, 2007). Erin Kavanagh. Irish by birth, long resident in Wales and Welsh-speaking, is a polymath, a poet, musician, artist and mythogeographer. We have collaborated on 2017 she and I […]

Imaginary Bonnets With Real Bees In Them

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Irish painter Eamon Colman. When we were discussing my writing a commissioned essay around his works for Thaw, at the Oriel Queen’s Hall Gallery in Wales in 2018, he encouraged me to read the poems in Paula Meehan’s Geomantic. That encouragement was the beginning of an erratic but compelling […]