Terminus

(2021) Terminus comprised of a 10-mile walk along the Southend Arterial Road (A127) from Gallows Corner, Romford, to the Dunton Interchange, Laindon. Along the route, an effigy of the title character from James Cameron’s 1984 film, ‘The Terminator’, was spray painted onto the bridge supports of intersecting junctions.

This action was recorded through creative writing, analogue and digital photography, and an exhibition. Through the process, a psychogeographical framework was constructed around the history of the road, my connections to this strip of Essex landscape, and James Cameron’s film. This led to a sci-fi narrative developing in parallel to the adventure, where the artist imagined himself as a cyborg sent back from the future to prevent the UK outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001 - the source being an abattoir on Little Warley Hall Lane, half a mile off the carriageway.

The resulting piece presents the artist’s initial notions on hauntology - the road as timeline with interchangeable destinations of past and future - alongside a personal awareness of mortality and bodily degradation, as the physical act of the walk signified weaknesses in the artist’s body, mirroring the gradual disintegration of the Terminator in the 1984 film.