+447535958939
barnabywessell@gmail.com
2025
2024
2023
Select perfomance and projects
Sketchbooks
About
+447535958939
barnabywessell@gmail.com
2025
2024
2023
Select perfomance and projects
Sketchbooks
About
The Wanderer Dependant, 2025, Bolsena, Italy
Map of the ‘Wanderer Dependant’s’ route around the lake Bolsena, ink on paper, 2025 -->
Below drawings made during the walk of the ‘Wanderer Dependant’ from the campsite of the Fat Germans to Bolsena. \/
This was my first Journey as the ‘Wanderer Dependant’ who has lived in my head, somewhat unchanged since 2024. He’s a revolutionary: trespassing across land, ignoring private property - infringes upon our rights to roam. Yet he’s also trapped in the past, walking from one ancient monument to the next (iron age hillforts, the via francigena, stone circles, long barrows) attaching ritualistic importance to these sites and vainly trying to inflate his own meaning through association to such monuments. A speculative myth weaving he extends to each object or experience he finds on his travels (a traffic cone becomes a cylinder for captured souls, or a tractor a terrible monster). For me as the artist, he is an opportunity too to give in to the voices of the land around me. To perform him is a deep listening: to the road I’m on, the sights sounds and feelings that arise from the journey and then an attemot to embody these into the charachter I play. Doing this first performance in Italy where I was unable to speak the language, but on the familiar 900 year old Via Francigena Pilgramige route was an effective “in” because I had ritualistic purpose and history behind the path I walked alongside a poor understanding of the specific region leaving room for speculation while maintaining wieight of meaning behind it.