Kel Portman

Ghost Walls
2019
A walk around the now covered Roman walls of Gloucester
Part of the Berliner Zeitgeist programme organised by SVA to mark the anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall

Further works can be found here:
Groundworks
Groundworks 2

Laurie Lee Centenary Walks
As we walk out…
May 2014
Nearly ready to leave to walk from Slad, through Wiltshire an to Southampton in the company of other artists for some of the journey but also several days of solitary walking.
Also joining me are some of Stroud – some Stroud Scarlet, the very first bottle of Rosie’s Kiss from cider maker Day’s Cottage, a lawn mower (not a real one but a Budding beer mat) and this evocative poem by Adam Horovitz:

A House Built From Cloth

I grew up in a house built from cloth
played in the ruins of cottage industry
old stones like teazle teeth
chewing at my feet

fragments of industry
their lime-wash white
faded to a smoker’s gold.

I grew up in a valley
stretched over stone like cloth
rolled footballs and roller-skates
over sheep-felted grass

built locks
in the stream
under the old trade road.

I grew up in a landscape
where hedges and dry stone walls
ran through the fields like seams
where the past

was a runic language
stitched, dyed and woven
into oracular hills.

Time settles like ordered cloth
in these valleys
catches itself red handed
as it is folded back.

I grew up watching the past
pulling the weight of the future
along the canal’s linear thread.

and images made from samples of the landscape taken every 2200 paces on a journey of 245948 paces

Wessex Ridgeway Walk part2
A personal walk down the Wessex Ridgeway from Shillingstone to Lyme Regis in Dorset

Norway
Images made during a Walking the Land trip to the fjords and mountains around Aurland in early August 2012

Circumambulation
To ‘circumambulate’ is to walk around something, often a sacred object or as a part of a ritual. This series is part of a larger body of work to be made as the result of a circular walk around Winchcombe and also around individual objects and features (usually trees or buildings) found at roughly 5000 pace intervals.

Over Water
A project to synchronise with other Walking the Land artists as they walked over water on bridges that cross the River Severn and other watercourses in England and Wales. These included Telford’s Bridge at Over near Gloucester, the Severn Bridge from England to Wales and the bridge over the Severn at Tewkesbury.
Images from these points were taken at 11:03, the time of the expected (but late) Severn Bore at Over Bridge and taken in the direction of the other locations. One of these images was taken looking west to the Severn Bridge and north to the Bridge at Tewkesbury and the other just as the Severn Bore passed under the bridge at approximately 11:38.