Art / Cliff Andrade
KIT FORM presents exhibition of Cliff Andrade’s walking-inspired work
Cliff Andrade is a Bristol-based visual artist whose practice is informed by the artistic and therapeutic power of walking.
He is also part of the Walking Artists Network, which has connected over 800 artists with an interest in walking as a creative pursuit.
“My work revolves around the exploration of my lived experience of migration and ‘split-identity’,” he explains, “and the issues that ‘intersect’ with that experience, especially issues of class and mental health.
is needed now More than ever
Geese, from ‘no place like home’, work-in-progress
Makeshift playground
“I walk, in a way, to help me process those issues, as well as giving me time away from them. A lot of my walking involves trying to understand my experience of walking and the mental state I enter when I walk.”
no place like home, a solo exhibition of Andrade’s work will be coming to Kit Form on May 15-18, focused on issues of “place, memory, identity and belonging”.
Both the title of the collection, and the images within it, respond to the slippery notion of home, in a constantly evolving city whose outward, marketable identity seems to be in stark contrast to the truth of those living within it.
London composite
From ‘no place like home’
As someone who was born in Portugal but grew up in London, Andrade points to a disconnection that perhaps, he has always felt.
As the prohibitive cost of housing pushes so many people further and further outwards, he finds himself drawn to walking as a means of reflection; discovering outlying parts of a city for the first time.
“I face the realisation that, owing to the London housing boom and crisis, if I were to settle in my native city I would be pushed out,” he says. “To an invisible London far from the postcard icons that encircled my upbringing. An invisible London I wander through on foot, as if experiencing a parallel existence in which I grasp desperately for the familiar.”
England flag
From ‘no place like home’
Cliff Andrade: no place like home is at Kit Form on May 15-18, with a private view from 6-9pm on May 15. For more information, visit www.jamaicastreetstudios.co.uk/kit-form.
All photos: Cliff Andrade
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
