The Walterian London app, featuring Stephen Walter’s hand-drawn maps of London - offers a genuinely different view of the UK’s capital.
The simple and beautiful iPad interface and high-resolution pinch zoomable format offers users the ability to explore his artworks in intricate detail, beyond what is possible even when stood in front of them.
Stephen Walter’s work is an investigation into the phenomenon of place.
Each work is an intricate world in itself; a tangle of words and symbols that make up a complex of hidden meanings and wider contradictions. Through mainly drawing, photography and printmaking, his artworks explore the meaning of objects, the glory of maps, our place in the World both as individuals and societies and touch on the potential legacy that we bequeath to future generations.
This amazing App showcases two of Stephens most high profile works:
The Island and Subterranea.
The Island (2008), in the Artists words:
"After producing a map of the UK and Ireland I came to the decision that I would make one of London. With an ingrown passion for the city as a native Londoner, I began this undertaking in 2006, it was to span over two years.
"London is one of the great living palimpsests of our time. Its layers of history and its constant energy to re-invent itself fuels this vast grey magnet. I was spurred on by the great Map Makers of Londons past - John Roque, Greenwood and Phyllis Pearsall (the originator of the A-Z). Informed by my own insights and knowledge, I combined further research on the Internet and through writers such as Peter Ackroyd and Ian Sinclair.
"The resulting map, a spoof of the historical ones of old, would challenge the first impressions of its viewer; touching on the Capital’s vastness, its’ secrets and its undercurrents. With this process in mind, I began to edit the information, keeping what I felt were historically important, interesting, relevant and amusing. These fantastical additions and epithets are purposefully innocent and acidic, trivial and serious. The Map is as much about the personality of its viewer than it is about of my own. In other words it acts as a mirror."
Subterranea (2012) is a companion piece to the The Island, exploring the same themes and ideas, but its focus is what lies beneath the ground.
Explore these wonderfully detailed maps available together digitally for the first time. Works on original iPads, Retina iPads and iPad mini.
Stephen Walter is represented by TAG Fine Arts (http://www.tagfinearts.com/).
The Island and Subterranea are published by TAG Fine Arts and are also available as limited edition prints.
A solo exhibition of Stephen Walter’s artwork will open in London in July 2013. Hosted at the Londonewcastle Project Space in Shoreditch, the exhibition will showcase Walter’s drawings, photographs and prints from the last four years (including his iconic London maps) and incorporate an interactive digital display of ‘London Subterranea’.