Introduction

I am Rachel Smith, an artist who likes to use psychogeograpy and walking art to create paintings, books and art pieces which also combine photomontage and digital art using the findings and experiences from the project.

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Park Life is a study of a local park using psychogeography, or deep topography. It could be many parks in any town but it is a park that is important in my life as it is the park where my daughter learned to walk and where we spend a lot of time but also I feel it is a special park for a community of people who live around it. It is an area that people walk through when going to work or into town and it is always open, which can lead to some problems but generally, maybe because of the houses that overlook the park as well as several large security camera poles, it feels like a safe and relaxed space. Students play a large role here as their college overlooks the space too and it offers them a place to mix with their friends and chill out in a way they couldn’t have done when at school. During lockdown we would walk to this park and round it for exercise and it was very quiet, only dog walkers and a tortoise walker once. No groups of people and no playing but as restrictions are lifted it is gradually getting back to normal and I wanted to examine this time. 

I decided to look at the park over 40 days leading up to the lifting of Covid restrictions in England. I divided the park into 40 sections in order to examine a section a day. It was initially divided by pacing round the park boundary, which is fortunately rectangular, then on a map. Working out that it divided into 8 sections at 27 paces each down and 5 sections at 23 paces each across. I started in the top right corner entrance pacing the first section and each day I moved across the park using trees and other objects to mark the section for that day.

For each section on the map I used What3words, an app which divides the earth into 4m squares and each square is given 3 words which make it unique so you can navigate yourself with accuracy anywhere. On the what3words app I worked out the three words for the centre of each section and could then use these to go to each section daily and pace the section boundary out from there.

This image shows a photo taken from each of the different sections and how they were laid out and in which order I visited them. You can see the What3words for each section.

Each day in each section I recorded a video about that space and wrote a blog about my observations and thoughts, contemplating the possible stories of the people I saw. I photographed and documented everything I encountered in each section from people, dogs, wildlife, litter everything. (Litter was an important part of this as litter upsets my daughter and it can be a problem, especially around the benches but there are also litter picking volunteers I discovered). I didn’t contribute or alter anything, I didn’t pick up litter or drop any! As I wanted to just record what I saw and not leave a mark.

I took panoramic photomontages covering 360° From the centre of each section which are linked below and were extraordinary in how each section varied so much.

I have loved this project and there is still more emerging from it. This park continues to surprise me and It is not over I have photographed and painted people I saw and will still paint more. I photographed the sky each day so will document each of these in oil paintings. There is a digital exhibition showing some work and a physical exhibition will be coming in early 2023. This park has so much more to give so keep looking.