Richard is a walking and multimedia artist-researcher with a specialist interest in embodiment, obscured histories/reluctant heritage and social justice. His background is in participatory media arts and education and he’s also a part time Senior Lecturer in Media Practice at Bath Spa University.
Richard’s creative practice attends to his privilege as an older white man. For the past seven years, he has chosen to walk locally, developing an iteration of walking-with, Walknow. This participatory, performative form of walking and questioning explores resonances and legacies from other times in bodies, spaces and places. Walknow is an emergent practice of non-confrontational co-creative disturbances concerning authorised narratives, uncomfortable histories and reluctant heritage. Embracing the constraints of lockdown, in his Studio residency Richard is renewing his knowledge of locative and mobile media, extending skills with sound and movement, experimenting with new immersive sonic elements, soundwalking and walking with sound.
Current projects:
Traversing Sydney Gardens (ongoing) a series of commissions exploring botany, empire and deep time.
Sweet Waters, (ongoing) attending to accountability and response-ability walking-with legacies of slave-ownership.
Walking the Names, (2019-21) a cycle of walks on social justice and poverty at the Bath Workhouse burial ground.
Sanctuary and Exile, (2021-ongoing) a commission from the Lake District Holocaust Project, second iteration of collaboration with Lorna Brunstein, Forced Walks.