Simon Faithfull
0º00 Navigation Part I: A Journey Across England, 2009
The complete film 0º00 Navigation Part I: A Journey Across England is being shared online for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic and anticipates the future screening of Part I and Part II: A Journey Across Europe and Africa at the House Mill.
The film shows the deranged journey of a figure obsessively following the Greenwich Meridian. Always seen from behind, the figure first swims out of the seawater where the Meridian hits the south-coast at Peacehaven in Sussex. The solitary person emerges from the water carrying a hand-held GPS device and, using this implement, proceeds to walk directly north along the 0º00’00” line of longitude. Any obstacle encountered is negotiated – fences climbed, properties crossed, buildings entered via nearest windows, streams waded, hedges crawled through. The figure gradually makes his way up through London, the Midlands and ultimately re-enters the sea at Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire. The figure then slowly swims away into the North Sea heading ever further north.
Courtesy the Artist and Galerie Polaris, Paris
Biography
Simon Faithfull was born in 1966 in Braziers Park – a utopian commune in Ipsden, Oxfordshire. He studied at Central St Martins (1985-89) and the University of Reading (1994-96). His work has been described as an attempt to understand and explore the planet as a sculptural object – to test its limits and report back from its extremities. Using his own body, and often assembling a team of scientists and technicians to help him, Faithfull brings back a personal vision from the ends of the world. His practice takes a variety of forms – ranging from video, to digital drawing, installation work and writing.
Faithfull has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad. In 2010, his largest permanent public artwork to date, Liverpool-to-Liverpool (Lime St. Station), was unveiled at the centre of Liverpool, UK. The work comprises 181 drawings made on a journey by container-ship, train and bus from Liverpool (UK) to Liverpool (Nova Scotia) – these drawings were then sandblasted into York paving-stones. His work is held in a number of public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Government Art Collection and Arts Council Collection, UK. Faithfull is Associate Professor at Slade School of Fine Art, London. He lives and works in Berlin.
Watch 0º00 Navigation Part I: A Journey Across England
