From the mid-twentieth century onwards, walking has become a way for artists to explore relationships between body, sculpture, theory, and social relations in art. In particular, walking has been used as a way to escape institutional strictures in art, freeing practitioners from gallery architecture, weighty materials, and commercial restraints.

To explore this, Noel Meek and Elliot Vaughan commissioned new walking performance scores by Aotearoa artists John Vea (Tonga), Louie Zalk-Neale (Ngāi te Rangi), Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu), Sonya Lacey, and Noel Meek. With performances every day of The Performance Arcade in Wellington, New Zealand in February 2024, Meek and Vaughan explored a rich and challenging artistic ecology showing walking’s potential as an aesthetic, social, and political action.