Don’t miss your last chance to see Artefacts from my Friday Walk at Field System Gallery, Ashburton, Devon. Coming to a close this Saturday, 6th July, the latest exhibition to grace the Field System walls is the first ever gallery show from the artist known as Man in the Woods.
The exhibition, which features drawing, printing, stitching and woodworking, draws upon observations gathered during the artist’s 5-year-long continued journey around weird, folklore-filled Britain. His lone ramblings, captured weekly for a huge and devoted following on Instagram and TikTok, are a fertile hunting ground for inspiration that take shape in the gallery as records, relics and way finders, that, as he puts it, ‘tell the strange story of rural Britain’. He continues:
‘In 2018 I began my Friday Walk, which has become the ongoing research that informs my work. One Friday, I left home and walked 18km out into the countryside, had a pint of ale at a village pub and got the bus home. The following Friday I took the bus back to that pub and carried on walking.
Every week since then (when there’s not a pandemic on) I’ve taken a bus or train (or both) to where my previous walk ended, and continued my journey around the English countryside. It’s not about visiting beauty spots, conquering peaks, or hiking long trails, but walking: gently moving through fields and woods, along footpaths and green lanes that are hundreds, often thousands, of years old; slowly getting to know the land around me, and embedding myself in the landscape.’
Man in the Woods works across the mediums of painting, printmaking, drawing, small-scale sculpture and textiles. The films of his research walks, which record his meetings of rural traditions, people, folklore and beasts, are watched by thousands every Friday. He is also a contributor to Weird Walk magazine, as well as the founder and curator of the mysterious Museum of Mump.
Field System is a new gallery, printery and shop located in the southwest of England at 13 West Street, Ashburton, on the southeastern edge of Dartmoor National Park. It is open Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5.30pm, or at other times by appointment. Find more information via the Field System website.
