Never Been Abroad

Category: Dreamt

The Dreamt room holds the foreign places I have never been to — cities and far landscapes built from films, photographs, documentaries and other people’s memories rather than from any visit of my own. It is a standing record of armchair travel and Fernweh: the abroad longed for from a desk and drawn in charcoal, because I have never been abroad and have no photograph of my own to show. These are the places I keep meaning to go to, and somehow never do. Start with Zürich, Venice or New York.

  • Charcoal sketch of Santa Maria della Salute across the misty Venice lagoon at dawn, a lone gondola on the water - never been abroad

    Venice

    No city has been handed to me more often, or visited less. I have owned Venice for thirty years without once paying the fare.

    Read on

  • Charcoal sketch of Lake Zürich at first light, a single white pleasure-boat on the flat pale water, the low old town and faint alps beyond - never been abroad

    Zürich

    I know Zürich the way you know a word you have read a hundred times and never once heard said aloud.

    Read on