Gareth Fuller is an artist and explorer. His work acts as a layered gaze into the identity of urban and rural places, transcribing their personal, geographical, and social meanings into what he calls ‘maps of the mind’. The results of these transcriptions are vast and intricate hand-drawn compositions – a series of visual portraits that express his personal and purposeful wanderings.
Unlike Boris Johnson, whose fate was to throw himself and the UK off a cliff, his hero Winston Churchill fell from a rickety bridge that crossed a steep ravine in Bournemouth as a child. The event is commemorated here by the symbol of his iconic Homburg style hat.
By the sixth ring road of Beijing, I witnessed an unusual marriage proposal. The bride-to-be’s ring was delivered by an aeroplane. This eye-witness story has been future proofed – the ring bearer is now a drone.
Emily Hahn, an American journalist and writer, led an adventurous life. Remembered here by a typewriter on the Bund, where she worked for the North China Daily News. The female gender symbol represents her commitment to feminism, and her pet gibbon, which accompanied her to Shanghai’s high society parties, is swinging from the building’s roof.
