A two-year collaboration with Professor Tony Collier
Professor Tony Collier lived with Motor Neurone Disease for almost 10 years. His condition resulted in progressive and severely limited mobility; his breathing was aided by a mechanical ventilator. Tony was a talented landscape artist and living with MND called for a new approach to his practice.
Following an illness in 2016, Kate undertook a walk in which she later told Tony that her physical movement across the Earth reaffirmed her ‘existence’. There followed a discussion of artist herman de vries’ appropriation of Gassendi’s counterargument Ambulo ergo sum (I walk, therefore I am) to Descartes’ Cognito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) whereby Tony expressed I cannot walk, but I am. I walk in my mind. It was from these conversations that the concept of communicating Tony’s Mindwalks as an artform emerged.