Connective Tissue
Buckinghamshire, August 2026
For years I have walked and documented the flyers, posters, and notices hung from gates, telephone poles, and lampposts — first across London, now around the Buckinghamshire village where I live. The posters occupy a liminal space of missing pets and their faceless owners, local notices, planning applications, and community happenings.
So, it seemed appropriate to place these images back in the landscape. The act of reasserting them is a simple ritual of return. The posters add to the encounters stumbled upon through walking and paying attention. They provide an opportunity to talk about vernacular images of place hinting at another world, while also acting as a record of the passing of time as the posters degrade with the weather, or disappear entirely leaving a space where they once were. The images also allow us to think about the throwntogetherness (Massey, 2005) of communities, their interrelations and gatherings— a meeting of trajectories rather than a bounded, nostalgic whole. Viewed in this way, each poster becomes a point within a constellation of stories, an ever-expanding system of relations in movement.
Through this process, the work engages with the 'Code of the Subtle,' making visible the traces of time, memory and community within the landscape. As the paper weathers, fades and changes, the images become part of the place itself, recording the shifting relationships between people, place, and encounter. In this way they mimic the environment I walk through, where nothing remains fixed and the traces of human activity are continually altered.
As the work deteriorates, I document the changes, recording their shifting relationship to the landscape and to the other notices, posters and traces of village life around them. The work therefore becomes not a fixed set of images, but something temporary and continually changing, shaped by nature.
Ref: Massey, D. (2005) For Space. Sage Publications, London
So, it seemed appropriate to place these images back in the landscape. The act of reasserting them is a simple ritual of return. The posters add to the encounters stumbled upon through walking and paying attention. They provide an opportunity to talk about vernacular images of place hinting at another world, while also acting as a record of the passing of time as the posters degrade with the weather, or disappear entirely leaving a space where they once were. The images also allow us to think about the throwntogetherness (Massey, 2005) of communities, their interrelations and gatherings— a meeting of trajectories rather than a bounded, nostalgic whole. Viewed in this way, each poster becomes a point within a constellation of stories, an ever-expanding system of relations in movement.
Through this process, the work engages with the 'Code of the Subtle,' making visible the traces of time, memory and community within the landscape. As the paper weathers, fades and changes, the images become part of the place itself, recording the shifting relationships between people, place, and encounter. In this way they mimic the environment I walk through, where nothing remains fixed and the traces of human activity are continually altered.
As the work deteriorates, I document the changes, recording their shifting relationship to the landscape and to the other notices, posters and traces of village life around them. The work therefore becomes not a fixed set of images, but something temporary and continually changing, shaped by nature.
Ref: Massey, D. (2005) For Space. Sage Publications, London
