The Journey of our Parallel Lives, 2019

Gifted by the artist

Woking, The Lightbox, Parallel Lines: Drawing and Sculpture, 22 June – 25 August 2019;
Woking, The Lightbox, Redressing the Balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection, 11 August – 20 September 2020

This piece from the Atlas Series responds to Walking Group by Kenneth Armitage. It was made for Parallel Lines: Drawing & Sculpture, an exhibition at The Lightbox of work by members of the Royal Society of Sculptors, made in response to key 20th century sculptures from The Ingram Collection.

“Armitage was an artist who felt connected to his Irish heritage. “Since moving to Ireland I have been fascinated by the pull of Ireland’s countryside to artists. I take walks all across the country and started keeping an abstract map. I noticed that every walk in the same place is different either in the experience, or in the particular path which seems to open up to my feet. At the same time, my courses run in parallel to each other, starting and ending together. These drawings represent movement, mapping the body’s course. I observe the feet never tracing the same route twice, and I understand that we all experience life differently even from the same path. In his sculpture Armitage was interested in bucking the patterns he observed in life – the horizontals and verticals which we must fit into – by making his walkers exist on a slant to “run across the rigid pattern”. My work takes this further by introducing a curve, the dots which make up each line representing a footstep, a moment, a thought.” Anthony’s drawings are created by burning the surface of calligraphy paper: her medium is the charcoal brown as the paper changes state.”