“Individual or group we are traversed by lines, meridians, geodesics, tropics, and zones marching to different beats and differing in nature… The lines are constantly crossing, intersecting for a moment, following one another… it should be born in mind that these lines mean nothing. It is an affair of cartography. They compose us, as they compose our map. They transform themselves and may even cross over into one another. Rhizome.” 

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1988: pp. 202-3

Using the map as a panopticon and allowing ourselves to zoom out of the environment we live in makes us see the world in a different way. We start noticing the shapes and patterns created by the lines that compose the map. The artist has looked at the maps of all four of the towns she has lived in and traced the roads she walked through in her everyday life, deliberately ignoring all other roads and any information one would normally find on a map. We don’t know where these towns are and there are no street names, no rail stations, no monuments. The artist has complete control over what the viewer can see on the map and shows us four different maps which become patterns unconsciously formed over the years by her regular walks to specific locations (school, library, work, supermarket). Sometimes ‘left-or-right’ decisions had to be made and one wonders what happened when she made her choice.

The centre structure supporting the different maps lines up the location of the artist’s home as the starting point from which the lines are formed. Each of these patterns are personal to the artist as they represent four different periods of her life. The lines also represent the people and experiences the artist came across in each town, crossing each other and moving in different ways. With this piece the artist says “This is the pattern my life has formed. What’s your Life Pattern?”

Life Patterns