Queering the Walk

Recently I’ve been working on including queerness in my work. My practice has begun to home into the concept of folklore, folk entities, deep time and cultural objects. Initially with my sculpture work I’d focused on iconography, repurposing cup and ring marks and runes. My work in many ways relates to the freedom of something pre/anti capitalist and Christian.

Walking the Manchester edgelands. Artwork in next image.

The concept of deep time is an idea that is so interesting to me, and it’s really helped me recently to pull together the ancient and the present, involving contemporary discussions. A primary one being queerness, not that queerness is contemporary! Its something ancient however only recently has it been discussed in the open. My work has definitely got something to do with the extension of human experience with nature rather than in nature.

Walking the edgelands. Study on Queer bodies moving though an environment. (PLATT FIELDS PARK)

Queerness has its place within folklore, and nature, and time because its existed there too. Yes. Humanity and nature are one of the same, and if you look at the mark that humanity had in this Neolithic period… carvings and stone circles, they’re all natural objects that have been moved or recreated, and I think exist together, but also, we exist together as a driving force: nature and humanity, but also there’s things that we do that can affect one another, even with us being one and the same.

Moving through the suburbs of Manchester and in the countryside as a visibly queer gender nonconforming person is always an interesting experience.

I guess looking at dominant culture and how it seeks to differentiate between the human world and the natural world, I think I enjoy the notion that neither of them can be truly separated and I think looking at these carvings and the mark that humanity had, whether it  be ancient or taking steps on a walk that you’ve done during lockdown or something, I think it’s very interesting to look at what’s up for grabs for us to repurpose, whether it’s mark marking from 5000 years ago, it’s too old to have a meaning…I think that element is really interesting.

Worsley – Emily and I

I wanted to centre a piece around how queer bodies move through nature and our relationship with it. This textile piece represents a walk around Worsley that I did with my girlfriend. Our route is printed in black ink, the reds are the areas we wandered within. Bringing human hair into it as well as bits of the landscape and fabric, put together an entity of natural, human & cultural material. The relationship to deep time at a cultural level is fascinating and I hope to have visualised this through my inquiry into queer identity and the outdoors.

Disrupting the common tropes that walkers often find themselves within and the heteronormative narratives of walking as meditative, sporty and healthy. I hope to look into how we as queer people find ourselves and explore our identities in the ‘outdoors’ and where we are situated within the natural world.

Involving my LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones hair in my work is proving to be a great way of incorporating queer family and community in my work.

This is where I currently am in my practice! Although working in this lockdown has been challenging its taking me down routes I never thought I’d be going down and its been really fruitful and full of self exploration.

I hope all who read this have a lovely week! Please comment any experiences you may have with being visibly queer in a rural environment! Or how nature makes you feel as a queer person

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