The body in time and place

Through symbolic action Becky Bowley’s work evokes the relationship between the body and time through the medium of traditional making and the movement of the body within a place. Her interest lies in poetical dialogues between the memory and imagination of human feeling and experiences becoming an embodiment of dream, myth and the ineffable. Materials are composed as symbols of the elements that resonate with impermanence and hint at transformation - to move the body within time and space “To cross a territory, to walk, to open a path, to recognise a place, to comprehend symbolic values, to invent a geography”5.

Shadow lands









A walk: 18 hours, from Brighton seashore to falmer manor house; Falmer manor house to Brighton seashore; carrying a body of sand in human size and heavier in weight. An act of letting go: the body arises from the seashore, is carried inland, reformed to a dance, carried back to the sea and reformed again before being washed away.
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"A system of empty spaces (the sea of the archipelago) through which it is possible to drift"2
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(Eighteen hours; blue dress, large suitcase and sand)
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Photographed by Mark Doyle