Peregrination: Shepley+Rowland

[Duncan Rowland]

General Practice Project Space, Beaumont Fee, LN1 1UH, Lincoln, UK.
9 – 27 March 2015 (viewing by appointment)

The word peregrination originates directly from the Latin word peregrinationem meaning "a journey, a sojourn abroad"; via the Old French peregrination or "pilgrimage, long absence" (12c.) - a noun of action "to journey or travel abroad," figuratively "to roam about, wander"; and from peregrinus "from foreign parts, foreigner”.

The idea for this project arose from the practice of roaming - with physical movement a slice though a digital drift. Dérives augmented with GPS, smart phones, encounters and social networking add informational pulls to the established situationist activity. As ‘foreigners’ to one another (delineated by Western Tradition to come from different academic/intellectual fields) Shepley and Rowland test their ideas to form flowing confluences of creativity.

In this new project Shepley and Rowland reimagine, through an emergent and disruptive antidisciplinary collaboration, the possibilities of an art practice as a full flourishing of individuals and their coming together in communities.

Together they explore the intersection of digital information processing and artistic creativity in enhancing (or hampering) such societies by creating new forms for community and belonging. Their conversations as travellers in data, ‘foreign’ to one another only though culture, finds form in contemporary art and asks how engagement with cultural, artistic and intellectual activities might enliven our belief in our own connections and capacities?