“Hugh Pryor is part of a new breed of artists crisscrossing the planet, creating artwork on a par with the ancient Nazca line drawings of Peru” Wired Magazine, 2002
White Horse Hill, Uffington, created by walking around the hill recording the tracks with GPS receivers
In 2001 Hugh inadvertently turned the world into a canvas when he drove in the shape of a fish on the roads of southern Oxfordshire and recorded the journey with a GPS receiver. He founded the GPS Drawing Project with collaborator Jeremy Wood using his programming skills to visualise, animate and sculpt GPS data – this was in the days long before we had Google Earth. Despite the foot-and-mouth epidemic which drew the countryside to a standstill and made precious land area inaccessible, and spurred on by a burgeoning internet shocked by the events of 9-11 wanting a distraction, the project grew from strength to strength with workshops and exhibitions taking place all over the country and abroad.
From cats in the park to a giant “IF” reaching through Iffley, Ifield, Ifold and Iford, ambitious drawings stretched over vast tracts of the country and recordings were made of wingsuit divers and gliders, dogs chasing after tennis balls, football fields, whales, giant spiders and mazes made of maize, the art of roundabouteering with giddying lengths of time spent on a roundabout; an ambitious 3D cardboard cutout model of The White Horse Hill at Uffington was constructed from 40 miles of walking; everything became an obsession with drawing on a huge scale, not easy when every line might require refuelling your car or walking barefoot in a mile of mud…
Press
New York Times “Drawing (and Doodling) With Countryside as Canvas” by Matt Mirapaul 2002
Wired Magazine “With GPS the world is your canvas” 2002
BBC Online “Safari by Satellite” 2001
More GPS Drawing selected quotes.
For an exhibition and workshop list see in the about Hugh page, and blog page here.