Photo Essay: Right of Way

By Val Murray

I regularly walk along footpaths near my home in Bramhall, Greater Manchester. Humans have walked here from Bronze Age herdsmen and Roman soldiers through to farm workers and modern leisure walkers. Over the centuries the land has been appropriated and exploited for human use, deforested and enclosed for agriculture, an oil depot, housing, roads. Now the route is a narrow path fenced to prevent access to the land. But we do still have the right to walk here and nature survives! The juxtaposition of nature and control is reflected in the formal photographs of barriers along the route. The accompanying map reflects my interest in the layered histories and complex agendas of places. The map and the photographs were produced as a folded map distributed locally.

Since attending art school in Manchester (as a mature student) I have been fascinated by the ordinary places, objects and activities which make up the world I inhabit. Collage (2D and 3D), composition of different elements, the power of one thing juxtaposed with another, has always been at the core of my practice. My art work is integrated with my way of life and connections to my place as homemaker, friend of my local woodland, coordinator of my local mapping group, member of the local green network and guardian of a garden. I regularly work as a member of Tea, an artist collective which investigates places, commissioned for large scale projects by, for example, Tate Liverpool, The South Bank and The Whitworth and currently working on a phytoremediation project with Brunel University. http://www.teaweb.org/ Until I retired I taught Art and Place at University of Central Lancashire. Right of Way is a solo work exploring these concerns. I have also produced Greenways another mapped local route exploring the relationship between human occupation and nature. http://valmurray.uk/  @vmplace