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Room 6: Distance and Time 

The wall works are made with cut vinyl lettering applied directly to painted shapes on the wall. Fulton designs the works and oversees the installation, but does not physically apply the vinyl himself. As he has said: 'My attitude is that I leave that work to the people who do it best. It's not like making a unique painting on a canvas . What I'm after is a professional, commercial finish. The intention is that the quality is the same in every location.' The scale of these large works relates to advertising billboards, and Fulton consciously appropriates the slick styling of commercial graphics to create a contradiction and 'as a decoy for the subject matter': the experience of nature.

Sun Moon, Tibet, 2000 Vinyl wall work © Hamish Fulton

The primacy of physical experience is at the heart of Fulton's art (as illustrated by Mind Body Land, Kent 1998 in this room) and has led him, since the early 1970s, to seek inspiration from other people including, crucially, walkers and mountaineers. Accounts of astounding climbs, such as Doug Scott's 1979 ascent of Kanchenjunga (8,598m) in the Himalayas, and long walks, such as Robyn Davidson's 1,700 mile journey from Alice Springs to the Western coast of Australia, seem to Fulton to offer something of more substance than much contemporary art.

In recent years Fulton's walking activity has moved closer to mountaineering, with expeditions in the Andes and Himalayas. In 2000 he reached 8,175m on Cho Oyu in Tibet (at 8,201m, the sixth highest mountain in the world). In this gallery the Cho Oyu walk is evoked by the powerful shapes of sun and crescent moon. This 'Good Luck' symbol is painted on the front doors of many homes in Tibet.