THE LONDON LINE
The London Line is a route I walked for 10 days in July 2018.
This was a development of the 2017 project 'The line from Madrid to Barnsley' which was a series of performances that focused on collecting dirt and making drawings through actions of cleaning.
Professional cleaners are often invisible and, through their connection to (our) dirt, disdained.
And yet we all clean. This project does not judge the value of distinct cleaning practices but assumes an inherent necessity for
some cleaning. It aims to question distinctions between artist, cleaner and audience.
Instructions:
- Take a brush, dustpan, bucket, water, scrubbing brush, cleaning cloth, SAEs, bags for dirt;
- In an anti-clockwise direction, follow the North and South circular roads starting at Kew only leaving the route where there is no public access. This is roughly 46 miles and 5 miles per day;
- Each day you will find 5 lines to clean, roughly one per mile;
- At each site sweep and collect dirt in the bag, put a little in the envelope and post as closely as possible to the site;
- Using water and the scrubbing brush, draw a line using the dirt on the ground;
- Make a print of the line using the cloth.
- Document the performance using the cloths and the dirt collected via mail art.