Fiona Cullinan

Walking art

Collaborative Croning the City visibility walk. Photo: © Matt Murtagh, 2021

Artist statement

I use creative walking to explore places, ideas and restrictions, with a focus on representations of women (particularly older women) in western society. I’m interested in who is able to walk and where, who is visible and invisible, and how this can be subverted and played with.

I’m co-founder of Walkspace, a West Midlands walking arts collective, which has exhibited at Artefact Gallery and received commissions from The British Council, Creative Black Country, and the Wildlife Trust. My writing has been published in The Walkbook: Recipes for walking & wellbeing.

I have devised and delivered performance art walks for The Dazzle Club and the University of Birmingham, and also a collaborative ‘Crone Walk’ for peri/menopausal women. My first walk-based art gallery piece was ‘Perambulate With Me’ in 2019 for the Artefact Gallery Winter Open, which initiated a series of walks and surveys taking place in Stirchley in 2020. Since then, I’ve completed commissions, talks and art walking activities, many of which are based on the theme of how women walk.

In 2022, Walkspace held its first show ‘Parallel Walking’ – a joint UK-Indonesia exhibition and zine, supported by the British Council. This included a personal work called ‘Female Calculations’ based on what feeds or eases the fear of walking alone in the city.

In 2023, Walkspace held its first group show ‘Walkspace 2023’ at Artefact Gallery in Birmingham, which featured a remix of Female Calculations to include magazine text instructions on ‘How to Walk Like a Woman’. 

Alongside being a walking artist, I have a practice in analogue handmade collage and mono printing, This involves remixing, remaking and subverting images to explore the representation of women and to create ‘counter images’ that disrupt those of the message-makers.

>> This work can be found at: Editoriat.uk

Shows and publications

2025 – Various works

  1. Full moon night walk – a collaborative re-walk of the lunar-charged waterways of Stirchley and Lifford in Birmingham to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Walkspace walking arts collective, 14 Mar 2025

2024 – Various works

  1. ‘Road Words‘ poem – a poster, Turkish map fold and short film featuring an experimental text made from road markings – Walking Shorts film night, Leominster, 11 May 2024

2023 – Various works

  1. ‘How to Walk Like a Woman‘ collage piece for group show. [June 2023]
  2. Walkspace 2023 – group show held at at Artefact Gallery. [3 June – 1 July 2023]

2022 – Various works

  1. Fear Schmear –anti-fear walk recipe in The Walkbook: Recipes for Walking and Wellbeing published by Walking Publics/Walking Arts [May 2022] 
  2. Female Calculations – video installation, video essay and photo collage for joint Birmingham-Yogyakarta Parallel Walking exhibition and zine held at at Artefact Gallery. [5-26 February]
  3. Parallel Walking exhibition and zine – Birmingham lead artist and admin on joint walk-based art project with Jalan Gembira in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, supported by British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme. [Jan-Mar 2022]
  4. Female Calculations – The Short Cut – film screening by IWD2022 x Fargo Village x Mothers Who Make Coventry x CineCov at The Box, Coventry, featuring 11 West Midlands female/non-binary filmmakers as part of International Women’s Day. [6 Mar 2022]
  5. Extreme Noticing: Trees! – pandemic walk video essay shown as part of Video Strolls contribution to Reweirding: Lost Landscape and Found Lore, Deptford, London, presented by the London Fortean Society. [28 April 2022]

2021 – Birmingham walk series

  1. Birmingham Dazzle Walk surveillance report – an art walk commission from @thedazzleclub exploring surveillance, gender and age in public spaces. [18 Mar 2021]
  2. Stirchley High Street Highlights self-guided walk leaflet – downloadable anti-gentrification PDF guide to Stirchley’s high street covering ‘noticed things’ and other curiosities during lockdown. [Mar 2021] [Birmingham Mail article, 5 April 2021]
  3. Dazzle Walk 2 – a women-only walk using Dazzle make-up as anti-surveillance counter-measures in an increasingly digitised and observed Smart City. [27 April 2021]
  4. Extreme Noticing: Trees! (Or: How I learned to stop worrying about the pandemic and love the trees) – short video follow-up from 2020’s Extreme Noticing project of lockdown walking featuring fence-eating trees, franken-plants and new tree feels. Shown as part of the Urban Tree Festival [May 2021] and at Magic Cinema [Oct 2021]
  5. Croning the City – gen+age group collaboration of older women walking to stake a more visible place in their city. [5 June 2021]
  6. How Women Walk @ 4WCoP – part of an all-female panel at the Fourth World Congress of Pyschogeography, presenting on the theme of ‘presence’.
  7. Dazzle Walk and workshop commission for University of Birmingham LANS students and teachers. [6 Oct 2021]
  8. Last of the Summer Wires – one-off pop-up daily walk email to 40 subscribers covering a week of walking in Tywyn, Gwynedd, Wales. [21 Sept -2 Oct 2021]
  9. Parallel Walking project – Birmingham lead artist and admin on joint walk-based art project with Jalan Gembira in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, supported by British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme.  [Oct-Dec 2021]

2020 – ‘Perambulate With Me’

  1. 10-minute Perimeter Walk – a derive featuring featuring community-mapped observations, an interactive exhibit which featured in Artefact’s winter group show. [Dec 2019-Jan 2020]
  2. Goodbye Stirchley Coop – a last walk up and down the aisles of this iconic local supermarket. [25 Jan 2020]
  3. Dark Moon Walking – a night walk of Stirchley/Bournville borders.  Walk review: In conversation with myself. [23 Feb 2020]
  4. Full Moon Walking – a magical, mythical night walk around Stirchley/Lifford’s waterways. Walk review: Reflections on capturing the moon [8 Mar 2020]
  5. Spring Equinox Sunrise Walk – a walk to see the sunrise on the single street in Stirchley that aligned with the sun rising over the horizon; also submitted as part of Blake Morris’s scored walks for British Summer Time). [20 Mar 2020]
  6. Mapping Stirchley – walking the same streets over and over within a mile of home during lockdown results in creating a map of curiosities arising from extreme noticing. [Mar-May 2020]
  7. A Walk Around The Block – a distributed walk from a prompt/score by Blake Morris for the LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement) First Sunday walk series, with walkers exchanging thought and images via WhatsApp. [5 Apr 2020]
  8. Messages in the Landscape – photo walks to find words within street and road signage. [6 May 2020]
  9. Distance Drift – Islands – a walking prompt exploring ‘islands’ in the local landscape, led by Sonia Overall, part of LRM’s first Sunday walk series. [3 May 2020]
  10. Summer Solstice Walk – a small group walk based on a personally curated selection of pins from the Stirchley lockdown map of curiosities and extreme noticing. [20 Jun 2020]
  11. Drawing Attention – a walk and draw, creating ink drawings of pins from the Stirchley lockdown map for the Stirchley Tapestry. [23 Aug 2020]
  12. Extreme Noticing under Lockdown – video presentation of art-walking in Stirchley during the pandemic and presented at the 4th World Congress of Psychogeography (4WCOP) [Sept 2020]
  13. Walk the Skull – a small group Halloween walk around a skull laid over a Stirchley map. [31 Oct 2020]
  14. Stirchley Tour Guide – individual tours of Stirchley’s must-see sights with residents of and visitors to Stirchley. [Jan-Dec 2020]