Richard T. Walker

let this be us

2012

Richard T. Walker, let this be us, 2012 (still)

let this be us is a single-channel video by Richard T. Walker featuring the artist himself roaming around the wilderness of a deserted landscape, sporadically humming a melody, strumming a guitar, or playing a few notes on a keyboard. As he traverses between striking locations we see him carrying large photographic prints of the same landscape that he is treading, which he then rests onto tripods so that the horizon in the photograph seamlessly matches that of the real landscape. As we hear the music, Walker comes in and out of view, dissipating into the landscape as his body becomes invisible, hidden behind the photographic prints. The sublime mountain peaks, as the artist explains, only exist in the distance, and our experience of them is different when we are up-close. In that sense they are unattainable, and always in the distance—a beautiful analogy of human longing and desire.

Richard T. Walker seeks out sublime landscapes, devoid of human intervention—often with vast skies punctuated by mountains—and transforms them into intimate settings to compose performative videos, with layered soundtracks. The videos are often presented with sculptures, instruments and images, that collectively speak (or sing) of the relationship between a single human life and the limitless expanse of the natural world. Originally from the U.K., Walker moved to California in 2007, drawn by the striking landscape of American West. Akin to 18th century Romantic figures such as Caspar David Friedrich, for Walker the sublime landscape is an arena in which he can explore strong human emotions and existential ideas: from the perception of the self and others, through to human solitude and our relationship to nature.

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Richard T. Walker let this be us

Richard T. Walker

let this be us