The fine art of perambulation

Some time in the late 1960s, Hamish Fulton began to go on walks. Actually, that should read, Hamish Fulton began to 'make' walks. (That's 'make' as in 'making performances', although Fulton doesn't like being called a performance artist.) He is still at it 30-odd years later, having made walks in the Himalayas, Spain, Iceland, India, Montana and Japan in the interim. Who said art can't be healthy?

Of course, there is more to it than that. While making his walks, Fulton has also made what you might mistakenly catch yourself thinking of as photographs, although their maker doesn't like to be called a photographer either. These often bear written texts - a Tibetan peak beneath the legend 'Kilroy was here but the Dalai Lama wasn't' springs most readily to mind - although sometimes Fulton dispenses with photographic representation altogether and just paints words. Thus, for example, 'A Twelve And A Half Day Walk On Baffin Island, Arctic Canada, Summer 1988' carries the alternately red and black legend, Rock Fall Echo Dust, in large sans serif capitals on a taupe background.

So what's it all about? The usual line is that Fulton is a Land Artist, to be seen in the same general line as Robert Smithson but without the rocks. (Fulton's art, unlike Smithson's, purposely sets out to be environmentally non-invasive.) Wander through the Tate's new show of his work, though, and you may find it more useful to think of him as a kind of neo-Aboriginal artist, eternally on walkabout, reducing the sparseness of the walker's life to a spare and pared-down form of art. Seen en masse, there's something grim about his work that suggests an almost priestly single-mindedness. It makes you feel like reaching for a bag of crisps and switching on the telly.

Walking Journey is on until June 2, Tate Britain, Millbank SW1, daily 10am to 5.50pm, £5.50, £3.50 concs.
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