Arts Thread

‘City Wandering’ is a series of tools for collecting the surface details that belong to the city, based on a love of walking and observing in public areas of the city. The tools include rollers, paints, trays, paper and containers that can be carried on a strap or placed on a walking stick to move around the streets, capturing the textures of various urban surfaces such as the pattern of manhole covers. These portable and wearable artefacts offer new ways of interacting and appreciating the city scape, allowing people to create an exclusive tangible urban memory of their walk. In my project, I attempt to record London’s manhole cover patterns as their patterns are easily recognisable and unique aspect of the city. I utilise a wood steam bending process to create lightweight and portable paper storage containers in which the pigmented paper can dry on the move. The challenge with this process is how to take a thin piece of wood, heat bend it, then shape it several times to create different shapes that fit the pattern of the manhole cover.