In A Common Third, Simon Pope invites viewers to reconsider the act of walking – not just as a physical journey, but as an intellectual and social process. For this work, Pope invites guests to walk with him through unfamiliar terrains, where both artist and participant must spontaneously negotiate their route, deciding together which path to take. The work emerges from Pope’s ongoing exploration of walking as a means of being together, emphasizing collaboration and shared experience. The resulting routes are shaped by their decisions, weather conditions, and the varying familiarity each individual has with the terrain, creating new landscapes through their interactions with the land.

This work, which marks Pope’s first solo show in London, is a dialogue between the participants and the environment. Through the act of walking together, they are not just traversing the land, but also participating in a form of mutual reflection. Audio recordings capture their attempts to describe key moments in their journey—when significant decisions about the path were made, offering insights into the landscape as it is shaped by both their movement and their dialogue.

Pope’s piece also engages with historical notions of the picturesque, framing the walk as a contemporary meditation on Romantic ideals, where the act of walking together in nature serves as a means of shared reflection and connection. This act of walking also invites a consideration of the local, contextual constraints on movement—specifically, the regulations, cultural practices, and traditions that shape walking in the upland regions of Great Britain. The work contrasts the freedoms associated with walking elsewhere, invoking ideas of unrestricted movement that transcend legal and cultural boundaries, much like the idealized image of the free walker in Henry David Thoreau’s work.

Ultimately, A Common Third is an investigation into what it means to be together. By physically navigating the landscape together, Pope proposes a step-by-step, shoulder-to-shoulder engagement with both the land and each other. In doing so, the work brings into focus the intersection of landscape, sociality, and the everyday practices that shape our relationship to the environment.

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Sources: Simon Pope website and the book Walking as Artistic Practice.