Gareth Fuller is an artist and explorer. His work acts as a layered gaze into the identity of urban and rural places, transcribing their personal, geographical, and social meanings into what he calls ‘maps of the mind’. The results of these transcriptions are vast and intricate hand-drawn compositions – a series of visual portraits that express his personal and purposeful wanderings.
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.
Unlike Boris Johnson, whose fate was to throw himself and the UK off a cliff, his hero Winston Churchill fell from a rickety bridge that crossed a steep ravine in Bournemouth as a child. The event is commemorated here by the symbol of his iconic Homburg style hat.
The Pearl, depicted here by its exterior pattern, logo and musical notes, is a landmark building constructed in 1931. Today's venue hosts many genres of music, theatre and events, including celebrations for Shanghai’s LGBTQ+ community.
