During the first lockdown I made daily visits to a meadow-wasteland surrounded by a palisade fence. At 900m from my city home I was aware of the site behind bars. I had walked past it on a path that formed a convenient, though isolated short cut. Walking this section fleetingly as it felt both alien and forbidding. During the pandemic the meadow behind bars (my name for the place and project) became my friend, a place of solace and recuperation as I worried about family and money.
The pressure of the lockdown, and the one form of exercise a day, forced me to approach the place with camera in hand from a route that felt less hostile. Using cable release and timer I captured my movements as I stepped through a gap made between the zinc bars. I walked alone as well as sharing my love of the site with friends and neighbors.
@alisonclloyd @The_Edgeworker (instagram accounts)
Alison Lloyd is an artist whose work stretches back to the 1970’s. In 2014 she began to exhibit this work alongside new work with her exhibition Grains at TG Gallery in Nottingham. Through a passage of movement incorporating walking and dancing she has documented elements of her life. Her return to practice was driven by experiences as a recreational hill-walker, and from art literature which foregrounds historical walking practices, largely within the field of postmodern sculpture. Alison adapts navigation, route-finding skills and contouring as artistic strategies, tools and processes. In 2019 a PhD emerged, Contouring: Women, Walking and Art (2019).