Manuscript pages on the wall detail written observations of a natural site. The writing looks conventional; handwriting flows left to right, page by page in an elegant but un-theatrical cursive. The handwriting is black and appears more rushed at times, but not by much. 24 manuscript pages in 4 groups represent walks on 4 different days around Llyn Idwal, a body of water in North Wales. Each page is a black and white xerox of an original. (The original is not exhibited.) The white pages match the white gallery walls. Hung at eye-level in one long row, the pages are standard office size.

Bethan Huws’ language echoes descriptive passages in Walden. Huws: “the grass is very very dark green and reflecting a kind of rich brown colour inbetween. And there is some kind of brown colour in the grasses as well. And all the edges are reflecting a kind of greenbrown colour of the little mounds, these mountain mounds of the lake.” Thoreau: “Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view... it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond.” (chapter 2)

Huws avoids privileging her observations, instead she walks around her subject. With each step, and as time passes, Huws reevaluates the lake. Every observation is fleeting. After describing variations of movement in the water, Huws writes: “Looking back, the lake looks totally uniform again.”

Huws also avoids any kind of autobiography in The Lake Writing. No confessions, just grass, water, earth. This is Monet territory. The lake in Huws' native Wales becomes her haystack. Huws’ writing allows the visual imagination to enact the same resonance of subtle changes Monet explored through the play of light.

Further, Huws strategy is anti-materialist. Perhaps this politics is best explained by Hamish Fulton, an artist who has made a lifetime of walking. Fulton writes: “Only art resulting from the experience of individual walks. A walk has a life of its own and does not need to be materialized into an artwork. An artwork can be purchased but a walk cannot be sold.” http://www.hamish-fulton.com

The artwork shadows the experience of walking. The artwork as object is inevitably tied to issues of the market. Huws does not exhibit an original manuscript. Huws removes herself from her experience and even the secondary practice of writing about the experience. Instead, Huws exhibits a xerox of the manuscript— a cheap, work day item.

By limiting the factors of landscape painting, by writing a landscape instead of painting it, Huws reduces landscape painting to description, acknowledging the impossibility of any attempt to definitively capture the natural world. The Lake Writing is refreshingly simple. Reading it is a kind of meditation, a peaceful walk with a generous, confident and inspired friend. Its economy of production serves as a reminder that art doesn’t need to consume a lot of resources or take a lot of space.

Huws’ films have been exhibited widely in Europe. New Langton shows another aspect of this challenging and exciting artist. A second piece by Huws, Origin and Source, is extraneous here. Less accessible and direct than The Lake Writing, this massive journal in 6 volumes is clearly an important exercise for the artist. Individual entries are intriguing: a definition of “metaphor of absence”, references to Louise Bourgeois, grammar puzzles. Ultimately, though, it is unclear how this whole functions as an artwork.

The Lake Writing (1991) by Bethan Huws is featured in the exhibition Textual Works: Bethan Huws and Frances Stark on view at New Langton Arts May 19-June 24, 2006. http://www.newlangtonarts.org