A few years ago, a group of Australian walking artists came together to form the appropriately named Australian Walking Artists. Going from strength to strength, they recently published a book, Australian Walking Artists, Volume 1 24/25, highlighting work by the members of their organisation. One of the group’s founders, and president, Molly Wagner, wrote an introductory essay for the book, which we republish below in a slightly updated version.

We acknowledge and pay our respects to the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we walk, live and work.

Preface

Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them — drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes — that makes them a constellation.

Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)

When Amy Tsilemanis, Kim V. Goldsmith, and I co-founded Australian Walking Artists (AWA) in 2023, we were astonished at how quickly artists came together in the name of Walking Art. This rapid response made us realise there was (is) a hunger for a community among those who walk for creative purposes in Australia. AWA soon became a busy collective of artists sharing ideas, walks, and artworks. In January 2025 we became a registered, NFP, arts organisation, and initiated a membership campaign to better promote our artists and Walking Art as a creditable creative practice. Our membership grew quickly to 70+ artists from nearly every state and territory in Australia.

Our creative practices are many and varied, including performance, sound, visual art, literature and social practices. Sharing a passion for walking as a method of creative investigation and production, we explore the possibilities of Walking Art in the Australian context by meeting online, walking together, exhibiting artworks, and encouraging collaborative projects among our members. We receive inquiries about our group and events regularly.

In all we do, AWA draws on the rich history of Walking Art as we connect with the diverse networks of Walking Artists all over the world. In Australia, understanding of Walking Art among the general public, and among other artists, has been limited. We seek to change that, and, in the words of Walking Artist, researcher and co-director of The Walk Exchange, Dr. Blake Morris, “…bring direct attention to how the medium of walking generates new relationships between people, the places through which they walk and the people they encounter in the landscape (both incidentally and by design).”¹

Walking, as Dr. Morris implies, is fundamentally a place-based art. The Australian Walking Artists walk in Australia, a vast Country riddled with the consequences of colonialisation, industrialisation and urbanisation. Underlying all our work is WALKING, putting one foot in front of the other literally and metaphorically, in our rural, urban and suburban landscapes. We walk as a gesture of hope for an equitable and sustainable future for all.

Walking, Walking Art, Walking Art in Australia

Walking is kaleidoscopic, experiential, uplifting, exciting, monotonous, boring and exhausting. Walking brings a delightful sensory, speculative, and critical language to art. Walking as an artistic and cultural practice has a complex history that interweaves with poetry, philosophy, visual art, performance, sculpture and politics. The late 1950’s and 60’s saw substantive changes in artists’ attitudes regarding the nature of art objects, the role of the viewer in the creation of art and the sites of artistic production and exhibition. These attitudinal shifts opened the path for artists to no longer use walking simply as a means of ‘finding their view.’² Instead artists began making the walk itself their artwork. David Evans, in his introductory essay for The Art of Walking: A Field Guide, writes: “In the early decades of the twentieth century, there was a decisive switch from the representation of walking to its practice… anticipating the eventual merging of art and everyday life.” ³

Wonderfully multidisciplinary and open in its form and expression, Walking Art generates artworks as individual and idiosyncratic as the artists who make them and the walks that inspire them. Some artists explore the physical landscape and sensory experiences and others emphasise the histories inscribed in the land. Others explore dreams elicited by walking. Often artists make drawings, photographs, videos, paintings, sculptural objects, and/or audio recordings inspired by their walks that are exhibited in an art space. Some artists invite their audiences to participate directly in the artwork’s creation. They guide walks and/or leave instructions for a viewer to follow. There is no specific style of Walking Art; rather, the art grows from the artist’s interactions and responses to the act of walking and the sites where their walks occur.

Genealogies of walking art often begin with Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-67) flâneur; the idle and anonymous observer who strolls the streets of Paris seeking to “…. set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement…”⁴ This idle, observant and masculine pedestrian is a nostalgic and perhaps fictional character, however the flâneur’s mode of transport (walking) and passionate observations of the city was adopted by the avant-garde, especially the Surrealists. The Surrealists used walking as a way of “…giving up conscious control…” and inviting chance and spontaneous events to “…reveal the unconscious zones of urban life.”⁵ They sought, through their perambulations, to experience the city in new ways. Walter Benjamin questioned the Surrealist’s emphasis on the unconscious and sought to awaken a critical stance toward “…the collective, consumer dream world of commodity fetishism…” particularly in the arcades of Paris.⁶ This use of walking as an instrument of political and social critique was adopted by the Dadaists, developed by the Lettrist Internationale in the 1950’s and refined by the Situationist International in the ‘60’s in their theories of psychogeography and the dérive. 

The Situationists were a neo avant-garde movement from the 1950’s to the 70’s comprised of artists, writers and filmmakers seeking to bring about a social revolution based on Marxist ideals. Guy Debord, ‘leader’ of the Situationists, proclaimed in the Situationists International Manifesto that a new society based on equality and freedom will allow individuals to engage in the ‘playful’ construction of their lives. “Situationist culture will be an art of dialogue, and art of interaction… (moving towards) …the moment of economic and mental abundance when everyone will become an artist…everyone will construct his (sic) own life.”⁷

Contemporary Walking Artists are increasingly interested in constructing community and emphasise the social and community engagement inherent in walking. Walking Artists Networks and Community-based projects and events are proliferating. walk · listen · create (WLC) is a wide-reaching, international platform that is ‘the home of walking artists and artist walkers,’ which has provided AWA invaluable support these past years. WLC was founded and is maintained by Babak Fakhamzadeh, Geert Vermeire and Andrew Stuck. They offer an extensive program of online meetings, Walking Art competitions, and archive of walking art literature and projects. This website also promotes the Walking Art Encounters/Conference held in Prespa, Greece and the Walking Art and Relational Geographies Conference held in Girona, Catalonia (Spain). These conferences bring together an international community of Walking Creatives to walk, share ideas, artworks and build friendships in ‘…sublime and significant landscapes.’ 

I have been fortunate to attend five of these conferences where I shared my projects, participated in walkshops and built a network of wonderful friends. Being amongst a group of Walking Artists after several years of working and walking in relative isolation so enhanced my ideas about Walking and Art that I knew it was important to bring Australian artists who walk together to enhance our explorations of this creative practice.

Home to the oldest continuous living human culture, Australia is a Country where humans have walked for centuries. 20,000 year old footprints were rediscovered in Mungo National Park in 2003. Walking is the oldest, most humane and most democratic form of transportation and is an activity that is encouraged as a way of improving physical and mental health, yet few people in Australia walk more than three kilometres per day. Many Australian artists walk as part of their creative practices. The well-known British walking artists Richard Long and Hamish Fulton came to Australia to walk and make art works.⁸ Yet, despite this long history of walking and walking as a creative action, linking walking and art is rarely done in Australian contemporary art and writing.⁹

In July 2023, at the Walking Art Encounters/Conference in Prespa, Greece I was delighted to meet four other Australian artists. I asked them if there was interest in coming together as a group of Walking Artists in Australia, and all replied in the affirmative. With the help of many e-introductions from Andrew Stuck and Kim V. Goldsmith, who is active in the Regional Arts sector of New South Wales, we hosted an initial online meeting on 6 September 2023 of what has become the Australian Walking Artists. The online meetings occur monthly. Our membership grows by the week. We had our exhibition, Way Beyond, in Articulate Project Space, in Sydney, NSW in February 2024 and its second iteration, Way Beyond Goes Wayout, at the WAYOUT Artspace in Kandos, NSW in May-June 2025. Our third exhibition, Walking Art Now, opens at the Gympie Regional Gallery, QLD, 17 July-27 August.A webpage, Instagram account andYouTube Channel were created to give the group an online presence and promote our activities. We had a four-day Walking Art Retreat in Johanna, Victoria, Gadubanud Country, in April 2024 and will host our second Retreat at Rainbow Beach, QLD, 20-23 August 2026. Four of us attended the Walking Art and Relational Geographies Conference in July 2024, the Walking Art Conference in 2025, and three of us participated in the Walking Assembly 2026, thus strengthening our international ties.

This book highlights the beginnings of the Australian Walking Artists and the eclectic range of creative practices of our members. The artists represented in these pages were part of our exhibitions, Way Beyond and Way Beyond Goes Way Out. Arts writer Sharne Wolff’s words written for the exhibition equally describe the contents of this book. “Traversing a broad range of media from textiles, photographs, video, performance, printmaking, sound recordings and effects, painting, collage, drawing and found and worn objects, Way Beyond fulfils its intention to expand our understanding of walking beyond the expected.”¹⁰

The Australian Walking Artists has set a cracking pace. Amy, Melinda, and I continue to marvel at, and be inspired by, the commitment and generosity of all the artists who are building Australian Walking Artists Inc. Their enthusiastic and committed response highlights the desire for a greater expression of Walking Art in Australia and the importance of bringing artists together to share their walks and creative ideas. Several members are in discussion about curating a Walking Art exhibition and Symposium in Sydney in April 2027. We collaborate with our International friends as an affiliate of the Walking Arts and Local Communities and six members of Australian Walking Artists shared their walks and work at the second session of the School of Walking.  It is obvious from these plans that the interest in and enthusiasm for all things Walking Art continues in Australia.

In the words of co-founder, Kim V. Goldsmith:

Being part of Australian Walking Artists from the start made me keenly aware of the yearning for a community around walking art here…We’re spread out across urban, suburban and rural territories… it’s a generous, creative network that is starting to define walking art in Australia as something quite distinctive. Our big sky country with its layers of ancient, modern and contemporary history leaves a lot of room to explore.

Walking and Walking Art offer ways for us to explore our surroundings and (re)construct aspects of our lives step by step. Whether a walk is a stroll on familiar pathways or a multi-day hike through rugged terrain, a commute to work, a pilgrimage, or for fun, a walk made in solitude or with friends, with curiosity, joy, fitness, grief, or revolution in mind, a walk is a personal, creative act.

As Fluxus artist Tomas Schmit writes in his 1965 Walking Score¹¹: 

PLEASE SHUT THIS BOOK! and take a walk!  

This text has been adapted from an earlier version which appeared as the opening essay of the book Australian Walking Artists, Volume 1 24/25, published by the Australian Walking Artists (AWA). Learn more about the AWA by visiting their website.

1. Blake Morris, “The Artistic Medium of Walking.” Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities, August 27, 2020, 410–20. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429244605-28. https://walkingart.interartive.org/2018/12/walking-medium-specifity ↩︎
2. Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking. (New York City: Penguin Books, 2000), 267. ↩︎
3. David Evans, ed. “Introduction,” in The Art of Walking: A Field Guide. London, Black Dog Publishing, 2012. ↩︎
4. Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life. ↩︎
5. Keith Bassett, “Walking as an Aesthetic Practice and a Critical Tool: Some Psychogeographic Experiments,” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 28:3, 397-410. 2004. 399. ↩︎
6. Bassett. 399 ↩︎
7. Guy Debord, The Situationists Manifesto.” ↩︎
8. Richard Long, 1977. Kaldor Public Art Projects, Project 07. https://kaldorartprojects.org.au/projects/project-7-richard-long/. And Hamish Fulton, Eyes of a snake: an eleven days wandering walk in Central Australia, July 1982. https://collection.fraclorraine.org/collection/print/264?lang=en. ↩︎
9. Sharne Wolff, The Art of Walking in Australian Contemporary Practice. https://figshare.mq.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_art_of_walking_in_Australian_contemporary_practice/19443026?file=34543271. 2016. ↩︎
10. Sharne Wolff, Way Beyond, Exhibition Essay. Feb. 2024. ↩︎
11. Lori Waxman, Keep Walking Intently: The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus. Sternberg Press. 2017. 281. ↩︎