Archipelagic Pursuits: A Coming Together of Art Making and Sea Kayaking

This paper considers the archipelago as a model of exchange and commerce to explore the meeting place between art and what Denis Cosgrove has described as the “geographical imagination.” It does so by considering two artistic projects in which the domains of art making overlap the author’s interest in sea kayaking—the two together constituting a vernacular, personally inscribed practice. These projects, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2006) and as part of Tasmania’s biennial Ten Days on the Island (2011), are contextualized by the work of theorists coming from geography and visual arts. The paper extends Katherine Harmon’s observation about the way that maps, “like artworks”, may highlight “differences between collective and individual experience.” Like the form of hand-drawn maps, another seemingly obsolete technology, the camera obscura, is presented as a means of invoking a heightened, experiential engagement with the (island) landscape.