Illawarra artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove will be taking people on free guided walks at prominent local locations during May.
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The Foot Notes project will see the renowned artist take groups on reflective tours around Bellambi Lagoon, Port Kembla Heritage Park and the Crown Street Mall - each with a different theme.
Buckmaster Dove said participants would be prompted to think about connection to the environment they were walking in and also to elicit a sense of belonging.
"Walking has a connection with language and place," she told the Mercury.
"When I walk it really brings up language in the place I've been ... and I use it as a tool to create message."
Anyone can take part in the walk, Buckmaster Dove said, while you don't need to be immersed in artistic culture to enjoy it.
However, walking for her is more than just a healthy pastime as it also becomes a stage for a "performative practice" which is site specific.
Themes explored on the walks will include how one stitches themselves into a place, seeding one's self into a place and how water plays a part in humans and the environment.
"Imagine footprints on a beach, when you look back at them they look like a stitch, like a thread running through the sand," Buckmaster Dove said about the Bellambi walk.
"Using the concept of stitching as we walk, we can expand that in an abstract kind of way."
The walking series is a prelude to a larger project slated for 2023, in which the artist will walk from Coledale to Manyana on the South Coast.
The devastating bushfires which ravaged the coast on the summer of 2019/20 sparked the idea for the 180 kilometre journey.
Originally the project (which is part of the artist's Masters) was to help deal with grief the disaster caused Buckmaster Dove, but has now become more a reflective exercise.
Buckmaster Dove owns a property in Manyana and was evacuated from the area at the time but luckily was not physically harmed, nor knew anyone seriously harmed, however the trauma took its toll and created extreme anxiety for her.
That walk is still a work in progress with details of how to incorporate the community still to be worked out.
To take part in the free walking tours (numbers are limited), make a booking through Eventbrite.com.au.
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