A Wander with Thread and Word.   

Contemporary Art and Ritual 

St Pancras Gallery

This exhibition ends today

This Wander took place last Saturday at St Pancras Crypt . I was delighted to be given the opportunity to create a wander which took participants on a different type of gallery tour.

We walked , re-imagining the way we spend time in art galleries. 







We took a leaf out of the poem  May 5th written by Sonia Overall in The Art of Walking. We thought about being toddlers running into a gallery space , squealing at the giant SILENCE on the wall, gleefully stamping our boots , "you realise that she is participating."

A Vara recording A Walk for Armistice Day
by Elspeth (Billie) Penfold

We experimented with alternative approaches to the ingrained walk, stop and glance, as we wandered through the exhibition.

These approaches included actions and poetry readings that responded to the artwork in the exhibition and also to the beautiful space in the St Pancras Crypt.

photo courtesy of the artist

The Mountain Pose as we contemplated fab work by Blandine Bardeau.

Paintings by Nne Kauzoigwe

 Paintings by Nne Kauzoigwe were viewed through a poetry reading of Owen Lowery's

poem Blackbird at The Stretton Fox :

"shared under a gentle whisper

of early light, stopping us as we grasp

that it is what it seems, a last

and a first from the thickening

dark, a sense or a gesture,

an invisible picture."

Photographs by Blandine Bardeau

Thank you to all who came walked and participated through  the  knotting of  ropes which recorded/scored  the memory of our experiences walking together in this wander through Contemporary Art and Ritual.

 The ropes are now attached to the Vara titled A Wander and will join the rest of the collections of fifteen varas, now sixteen, recording walks over the last four years with Thread and Word.

We ended our walk with an impromptu performance by the artist Christina Lovey. This created a beautiful connection with our next walk Are you Listening? in Battersea Park next Sunday at 2pm.

We hope to see you there!


For our next walk :Are You Listening?




A Wander was inspired by Ways to Wander the Gallery , by Clare Qualmann and Claire Hind. Published by Triarchy press. This book contains two walking scores by Elspeth Billie Penfold.