Crossing boundaries ...

I spent the bank holiday weekend camping in Wales with my husband-to-be, which is something I haven't done since I was a child! Apart from the first day when we put up the tent where it was windy and rainy, we were lucky enough to have some really nice weather. We did loads of walking along the coast and the beaches as we were on a peninsula going through Morfa Nevyn, Pwllheli, Criccieth and Caernarfon.

We also went to Rabbit Farm on our way to Criccieth which had some really cute baby pigmy goats and alpacas! It was really nice not to have my mobile or any access to the internet for a few days and a really nice feeling to know that I was leaving everything in my tent when we went off for the day knowing everything was there when we came back! On the last night we had a BBQ and a fire on the beach accompanied by a glass of red wine watching the sun set ...

After returning home from my trip I have been staying in Chester with my family and noticed these two chaps in my parent's front garden!! I had to include a picture because it was really random ... the nearest water is the River Dee which is a good mile or so away so I guess they had been flying and needed a rest. They seemed a bit disorientated and spent the evening wandering around the garden and dozing. I gave them a bowl of water and some bread which they quickly devoured and then carried on their journey!

On Wednesday I attended the Crossing Boundaries Symposium in London at the Royal Geographical Society in association with Insitute of International Visual Arts which explored concepts of mapping and the interstices of cultural geographies, social geographies and the visual arts; blurring the boundaries of science and art. The symposium explored new approaches to mapping; counter-cartographies, repositioning, fragmentation and space, connectedness and the world as a multi-layered space. There was a fantastic key note by Professor Irit Rogoff who discussed cultural and visual socio-political re-mapping, language and the representation of a multiplicity of experiences.

The symposium ran alongside an exhibition at the RGS called Creative Compass and the Whose map is it? new mapping by artists exhibition at InIVA. I really liked Agnes Poitevin-Navarre's work and her 'Proustian Map of London' which was part of the Creative Compass exhibition. Mapping is a concept that I am particularly intersted in my own research but has not been explicity and critically examined in arts practice; I think I am more interested in it as a process rather than as representations of map-making. I also had a quick gander around the RGS library which was amazing ... there were maps that were around 800 years old written in latin and hand-made maps that included beautiful and ornate drawings as well. 

It was a really interesting and thought provoking day in which I met a lot of interesting people. After the symposium, I had to make the most of the beautiful weather and after a quick look in the Serpentine

Gallery, sat in Hyde Park writing my research diary and reflecting on the day; disseminating the many thoughts that I had.