Wanderlust is a solo show by Tim Knowles, exploring the concepts of endeavour and challenge.
The artist’s creative practice incorporates chance operations and performance. For his Windwalks and Nightwalks Tim Knowles acts as a contemporary flaneur, moving about the city and countryside via an unusual self-imposed set of rules. Akin to scientific experimentation, the results of the project are unpredictable and outside his control. For all its verve, there is something unnervingly lonely about Tim Knowles’ work.
video still from Nightwalks
In one of his Windwalks Tim Knowles set off from central London guided solely by the wind. For this piece he created an extraordinary-looking wind vane mounted to a helmet. His steps were dictated by the wind and traced with a GPS device. He documented the nocturnal city life he saw with a video camera.
The walks took place in the early hours of the morning, when the streets were quieter, and some nights were more chaotic than others. Whirling air currents bounced off buildings and lead the artist into a cul-de-sac of littered plastic bags and swirling leaves with no escape until the wind once again changed its direction.
The Nightwalks are a series of illuminated walks that Tim Knowles created in the countryside during a new moon. Over the period of an hour, the artist walked away from the camera while carrying three wide-beam torches. His path, along a precarious rocky ridge in the darkness, was illuminated and captured using a long-exposure, large-format photograph. The image invokes Plato’s allegory of the cave, appearing like a pathway of ghostly travellers shining inside an electrified landscape.
http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/archive1/2009/wanderlust-tim-knowles.html