Artist in Residence at Bankside Hotel Winter 2018-19 and 2023

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2019

Signature Art Prize Winner 2015 (Painting)

Luke M Walker views his practice as an inquiry into memory, time, distance and materiality with each series of works being an opportunity to discover something new, through experimentation, exploration, chance, the collection of data and other records of his personal progress through the environment, whether a city or somewhere further afield. It is an attempt to discover the role of a Landscape Artist today.

He was Contemproary Collective's first Artist in Residence at Bankside Hotel, London from November  2018 - February 2019, where he made a series of walks from the residency space and painted the locality, a site undergoing immense change.

Much of his work derives from exploration, primarily through walking. This can involve collecting specific data on walks; the length, the pace, the altitude or number of steps etc. and translating the data into a painting which become physical representations of the momentary act of walking itself.

These ‘potential landscapes’ are also paintings of time and distance and it is these additional spatial and temporal qualities that he is keen to express whether through constructed landscapes or from a direct observation of the environment, they act as a record of both the activity of the artist in the landscape but also in the studio.

What once might have been described as homage to the environment has now become something more adversarial, with each body of work beginning to question the value of human activity; whether this is the construction of our cities, our stewardship of the environment or the role of the artist as a witness and how this can be expressed.

 He is a co-founder of The Wilderness Art Collective, bringing together a diverse range of artists from across the UK who’s work explores the Landscape and Environment. Their inaugural exhibition ‘Landlines’ at the Royal Geographical Society in September 2019 and the show will now be touring.

For ‘Landlines’ he undertook a series of eight 25km walks to the edge of the city, creating a series of paintings of these along with a smaller series entitled ‘The Last Houses of London.’ 

He was also recently invited to jointly exhibit in Taichung, Taiwan in ‘Travels of the Mind’ a show in which both artists have created paintings from memories of cities visited.

To read more about Luke M Walker and his unique vision, check out his features in The Architect's Journal and on our blog.