Practice in Context

I am currently studying a Masters in Fine Art at University Arts Plymouth. As a regular walker, I am interested in human engagement with the landscape. The research for my next module ‘Practice in context’, is about how humans connect to nature and specifically which of the five senses people engage, when being in a natural environment.

Lundy’s isolation provides the perfect place for people to engage with nature. It is without distractions from the noise and everday tasks that occupy us when on the mainland. Lundy encourages people to explore its island and without route markers it is a place to wander and lose yourself.

Mail Art and Letterboxing

My initial idea for this project came from Mail Art, a practice of sending art postcards as a way of artists exhibiting or selling work without going through a gallery. This art movement gathered momentum in the 1960’s, the most famous artists being Ray Johnson. Johnson posted collages and prints, which led to the New York Correspondence School. As a method of communicating with people, I have used the Lundy Letterboxing network and the unique Lundy Postal System; the oldest private postal system in the world, set up in 1929 by the island’s owner Martin Coles Harman.

Lundy has 28 Letterboxes (including the Oldenburg), which are boxes hidden across the Island. To find them a set of clues have to be followed. Each box contains a rubber stamp that is unique to its box.

To research how people use their senses whilst out walking, I have left unique collaged postcards in the letterboxes, with a question as to ‘which of their senses feel most alive when on Lundy’?.

Below are some of the Post cards that are left in the available 28 letterboxes. I have collaged the postcards from discarded resources on the island. Most cards have a connection to nature, history or a feeling of well-being.

The postcards have postage stamps on them and are mailed to my mainland address. This enables the postcards to journey, from the person/people who find it, to the postmaster at Lundy, to travel via boat or helicopter, to the Royal Mail on the mainland and the Post delivery person, who puts it through my door.

Comments from visitors have mainly been connected to sight and sound, hearing ‘sound of the birds, the seals and the sea’ or seeing ‘the landscape change by the hour’. Taste ‘salt in the air’, feeling ‘the battling rain’.

As I continue to place cards in Letterboxes, I am collating the information as a way of researching and driving my professional practice forward. The cards will be displayed at a public event alongside my interpretation of the information collected. The whole process will contribute to my MA in Fine Art.

Linked work

I led a workshop in the St Helens Centre on the Island, when visitors were able to make their own postcards to mail to mainland recipients. In addition a workshop with Georgeham School when pupils on Island residential produced postcards, which they then put in letter boxes and which were returned to them via their school. In the second workshop I tried to encourage participants to move away from the traditional Lundy Postcard to a more abstracted approach, which I believe worked.