AN ARTIST will be donning a costume of the word ‘home’ on a month-long walk from her home in South-East London to her childhood home in Mid Wales.

Artist Harriet Hill will be travelling through Oxfordshire from June 29 to July 6.

On her way she will be stopping to talk to people about what the word ‘home’ means to them and how that has been affected by the pandemic.

The artist will be recording her interactions with passers-by which will later be edited into a film to be exhibited alongside the costume in Helsinki in September.

Ms Hill said: "Home is a potent word, particularly now with Brexit, the refugee crisis, rising homelessness and the impact of Covid lockdowns. It can mean a place, a physical structure, a deep emotional bond, or an absence of any of these.

“For me, wearing this unwieldy costume is an absurdist personal and political act; a visualisation of liberation and ties, the burden and comfort and feelings of belonging and isolation that ‘home’ can be.”

With funding from a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England, Ms Hill will set off on June 22, arriving at her childhood home on July 25.

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Accompanied each day by a walking companion, her route passes through Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and finally into Powys.

As she walks, Harriet will be stopping off for day residencies at several local arts centres: the Feminist Library, Peckham; HOME on the High Street, Slough; OVADA, Oxford; About Face Theatre Company, Leominster; and finally, The Sidney Nolan Trust, Presteigne.

The artists costume is made from yellow canvas over a bamboo and fibreglass frame mounted on a pair of bike wheels.

Oxford Mail: Harriet Hill artist from South London walks through Oxfordshire wearing 'home'

Inside the ‘home’ on wheels Ms Hill will have everything she needs to make a home for the next month of the walk. The ‘home’ will even have a pull-out tent and a solar charger.

Ms Hill said her walking installation HOME-ing ‘embodies the universal and the personal’.

She describes it as ‘bold’ and hopes it will capture people’s imagination as she passes.

As she journeys, the artist will explore how her childhood experience of moving from urban South London to rural Wales in the 1970s made her feel both an outsider and at home in the two locations.

Passing through many diverse communities she will investigate the commonalities and differences in how people relate to home, revealing a snapshot of the British public at this transitional moment in UK history.

Ms Hill will be in Oxford on July 2 at Oxford Visual Arts Development Agency (OVADA). She will spend the afternoon at the arts space and visitors can come and see the costume and talk about home.

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