Gareth Fuller is an artist and explorer. He walks and wanders hundreds of miles to create vast, hand-drawn portraits of place. From London and Beijing to Pyongyang and Washington, D.C., his work reveals stories and identities of landscapes, capturing their personal, geographical, and social essence in what he calls ‘maps of the mind.’
By the sixth ring road of Beijing, I witnessed an unusual marriage proposal. The bride-to-be’s ring was delivered by an aeroplane. This eye-witness story has been future proofed – the ring bearer is now a drone.
The first North Korean female pilot is depicted flying through the air. I was told she had dinner with Kim Il Sung in a hidden bunker, inside a wooded valley. Legend has it that black dragons also once lived in the valley, and that they danced in the white clouds.
In 2017, Beijing’s recycling system was known to be highly efficient, if controversial. Huge mounds of waste were sorted by people living on site, in small dwellings, amongst the decay.
