The Man Who Ate His Boots

An on-going project, devised with artist Marcus Coates The Man Who Ate His Boots is an experimental project that relates artistic exploration with the idea that arduous journeys of exploration can be undertaken in a domestic setting, in order to bridge the gap between professional explorers and our everyday experience of landscape.

The project involves approaching local domestic landscapes as though they are unexplored. We are recreating and re-experiencing the river journey that John Franklin made to the Polar Sea in 1819 through Arctic Canada. During the return journey four of his Canadian voyageurs were killed and eaten. In all 11 of his companions died of starvation.

We are scaling his journey to ours, navigating as he did, attempting to eat as he did and document the journey as he did, through charts and watercolours. The discrepancy between what is possible in rural England and Wales now and what occured in Canada then is what interests us. Is it possible to barter for food with needles? What do cooked boots taste like? We will be constantly finding equivalents for the processes of nineteenth century exploration. It is in this expediency and transformation that the innovative artistic content will lie.

We are working with Bow Boys School on re-creating some of the most dramatic moments from the journey as well as building canoes.