Take 'em for a Walk

Bolding at Alfies, London, UK
2026

 

The ‘walk cycle’ is an exercise. For a character to come to life, it must first have a way of moving, a walk that is as finely tuned as the character's visual design. These cycles loop endlessly, with no destination, a performance of movement that trains the character's identity in the same way an athlete might drill a physical activity to train a muscle.    

 

In cataloguing each frame, this distinctly visible chronology reflects to me a modern obsession with dissection and record keeping that has only accelerated with the digital age. Camera rolls, looksmaxxing, biohacking, and everything backed up to the cloud. It is a product of my own preoccupation with zooming in, finding out, looking up, pinning down. In cataloguing each frame, we reveal the secret, the whodunnit, before any mystery has the chance to unfold.    

 

At the same time, we are engaged in embodied space. The viewer animates the image through the act of walking and looking, from passive observer to active participant. In getting closer, something dies, but something else emerges. Everything is a trade. It's grotesque and obsessive. It’s pure and passionate.    

 

Animated characters are perpetually recast in the landscape of contemporary art, an effective shorthand for a host of associations, of play, curiosity, the birth of modernism and the escapism of cartoons. It recalls a time when everything felt ahead of us, the medium of tomorrow, when having no destination wasn’t futile, but a freedom.