On a brisk February morning in ’67, Fulton was right on time at the front entrance of Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. One by one, fellow students showed up to collaborate in what was a rather unusual “artwork”. A walk from East Central London to the outskirts of the capital. Starting in a concrete urban landscape, each step forward would take the group through a scenery that slowly transformed into that undefined no-mans-land, where semi-detached houses gradually spread further apart on widening green fields that at some vague moment becomes the countryside. Reaching their destination - simultaneously the conclusion of the art-walk - all that was left was a relational piece of art that would only exist in the collective memory of the walking group.

One of several artists at Central Saint Martins - at the time also counting Richard Long and Gilbert & George - Fulton explored new forms of sculpture in the late sixties, contributing to a decade that became a golden age of innovation for contemporary art. A time defined by expanding the ideas about what artworks could be. Minimalists rebelled against the Abstract Expressionists through works presented in structured colour, form and space; Conceptualists regarded the idea behind the works as more important than the appearance; and the pop artists - already well into their exploration of popular culture - addressed a post-war society that was swayed by the mass-media, and increasingly focused on consuming their way to happiness. The latter movement so successful in blurring the definition of “what is art?” that it unintendedly made an immense contribution to the commercialisation of the art world; much to despair of some of their contemporaries. Believing art was not just a commodity, artists such as Robert Long and New York artist, Dennis Oppenheim, pioneered the Land Art movement in the sixties, emphasizing a direct engagement with the landscape as a central characteristic of their practice. Often leaving no physical artwork to be sold once a project was completed.

Fulton sympathised with Conceptualism and occasionally he was labelled as a Land Art artist, although he quickly rejected any association with their philosophies and practices, opposing nature as being used and remodelled for the purpose of creating art. Following his travels in South Dakota and Montana in ’69, he couldn’t leave the thought that art could be “how you view life”, and not tied necessarily to the production of objects. It had all started with that first walk on a London morning two years earlier. Igniting an idea of developing an artistic activity based on the act of walking; whereby the walks themselves become the artwork. Six years of trial and error, and the accidental action of bringing along a camera at one point to document the land, and Fulton was on the right track. His interest in the landscape and the experience of the journeys called for photography as the artist’s medium.

Over the course of a walk, Fulton takes notes in a journal to help provide the text for the photos he later creates. Up to this point, both the photograph and text are equally important to the finished image and will contribute with one of two contrasting elements. Fulton sees the walk itself as the spontaneous aspect that moves freely. One step at a time the surroundings will change, and depending on the time of day, weather and environment, the walker is in the mercy of the landscape. The text on the contrary is controlled. There are no words in nature, and he decides how to describe the scenery to the viewer and where to place the text in the image. Sometimes a photograph will have words written below it as in A Walk to the Summit of Popocatepetl Mexico One Night Bivouac on the Crater Rim (1990) and other times, such as Boulder Shadows, Wyoming (1995), he places it inside the image to balance the weight between the boulder in the photo and the type style. The words are purely informative. In capital letters they let the viewer in on the location of the place, whilst the rest is left to the imagination, leaving out any personal thoughts of the artist at the moment he takes the shot. In one image, the viewer knows where it is, and what is being observed.

One way of describing Fulton's works and the way it stimulates the mind is following his own philosophy: facts for the walker, fictions for the viewer. Over the years, the artist has found a number of ways of condensing his experience but more often than not, it remains opaque. In Untitled, Spain (1990), Fulton doesn’t reveal what the text means to him - or the audience - that the undisclosed distance from the north to the south coast of Spain appears in graphic text. And sometimes, when the text is especially terse - simply disclosing ‘seven one day walks in the rain in Nikko’ - it is hard to register little more than his resilience and love of walking in nature.

“Where I live, people say, 'oh, he’s off on one of his strolls again’”. “I like the joke, but the reality is, I made a decision when I was in my twenties to do this, and I honour that commitment”.
Hamish Fulton.

The dedication with which Fulton treats his practice has been highlighted in exhibitions around the globe for more than six decades and placed his works into collections such as Tate Britain and Victoria & Albert Museum in London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Berardo Collection in Lisbon; and many more prestigious institutions. To this day - and well into his seventies - he has no intention of stopping, and continues to arrange group walks for the public, making his point that walking is an artform in its own right.

Three walks concluded in Mexico, Japan and Spain in ’90, and one in Wyoming, United States, in ’95, were the inspiration for Hamish Fulton’s series of four print editions released in collaboration with Eyestorm in 2000. Boulder Shadows, Wyoming (1995), The Life of Scattered Stones. Seven One Day Walks in the Rain Nikko Japan (1990), A Walk to the Summit of Popocatepetl Mexico One Night Bivouac on the Crater Rim (1990) and Untitled, Spain (1990) are printed as Iris print photographs on Somerset enhanced paper in editions of 250. Of each edition only 20 were produced. The prints are signed and numbered on front.

To view the print editions in further detail and to find more information about available works by Hamish Fulton, visit the artist’s page here.