Earth Day Walk’s title reflects the day this map was conducted and is a combination of frottage print and monotype. By the use of rubbing, the surfaces of both static objects in – and found objects from – the area of Hampstead Garden Suburb was documented. The black line is the route I walked while I documented, tracked with a walking app and added as a monotype.
During the lockdown, walking became of great importance to me and when I moved from Scotland to London in 2020, I actively used walking to familiarise myself with a new area. The discovery of Hampstead Garden Suburb resulted in a fascination for its appearance, history and founder. The movement – both the suburb’s principles and my physical activity is reflected in this frottage walk map.
https://aasevikse.myportfolio.com/earth-day-walk
Åse Vikse is a printmaker originally from the western coast of Norway who moved to the UK in 2015. The connection to a specific landscape can often be detected in her artwork as an ongoing search for place, its inhabitants and our memory of these.
She refers to her process-led practice as ‘mapping’ and utilises the technique of frottage print – the rubbing of surfaces – to document the landscape she moves in. Some of these ‘frottage walk maps’ have a final layer added – the walk tracked digitally, drawn in ink and printed as a monotype.