Tony Wade: Boundary No Boundary

Tony Wade is a visual artist based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Our interactions and relationships with landscape, both urban and rural, can provide magical experiences if we look. His work is about exploring and documenting those experiences, through close examination of the 'infra-ordinary', and finding ways of presenting discoveries, through painting, sculpture, installation, light and music.

"My current project is a continuation and development of a previous project - Boundary No Boundary. For that project, I walked the entire 60-mile length of the Wakefield District Boundary, painting (plein air) what I could see from this cartographer’s line looking out. I wanted to generate a sense of identity for the district without depicting any of it. This generated 60 paintings (in 20 triptychs) that were exhibited in a free-standing circle, forming a complete panorama that the viewer could enter, stand in the centre of and look out at.

For my development project, I wanted to examine the city of Wakefield, the political centre of the district. The idea was to paint (once more Plein Air) the centre of the district looking in. I was three days into the project when the lockdown was announced making that plan unworkable. Instead I painted from documentation, photographs and memories from my allowed daily exercise walks. This has forced me to look very closely at those places close to home, scenes we pass every day but hardly notice.

These scenes and places are painted as I remember seeing them, placing the same emphasis on street furniture, buildings, trees, industrial estates and parks. This process is inspired by Geroges Perec’s Species of Spaces and the idea of ‘seeing more flatly’. The paintings are completed the same day as the morning exercise walks, so they form a record of that day. The paintings are shared the same day as a visual diary and are then left to fend for themselves. They capture Wakefield during Covid-19, one day at a time."

To view more of Tony's work, go to: www.tonywadeart.com, Instagram, or Twitter.

CuratorSpace are currently featuring articles by artists, curators and organisations who want to share their experiences of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether that is artists using their practice as a way of exploring new boundaries of isolation, or as a way to connect more broadly with their communities. We are also interested in hearing from curators and organisations who are offering support to artists.

Contact us at louise@curatorspace.com to share your story. 

 

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