Test Drive was an artist in residency on Bowen Island in BC, Canada. The intention was to explore how thinking and making might be shaped by solitary walking in deep wood and remote spaces, and how this might develop a phenomenological attachment to place that form the basis of a kind of affinity politics. Drawing, photography , films , interviews and visits to First Nation Cultural centres and sites of significance formed the investigative process. There was also a public lecture and a ceramics workshop associated with the residency.The intention was to explore whether is possible to explore intercultural exchanges that avoid cultural appropriation and to consider the possibilities of shared narratives that are based on an umbilical rather than territorial relationships to land and place. As a european, is it possible to go beyond familiar frames of reference in terms of forest narratives, and how one might acknowledge similarity and difference simultaneously? The work produced during the residency contributed to the production of two interconnected series of sculptures: The Deep Wood Women, and Women who have had Incidents with Animals, as part of an ongoing exploration of heroines made in the UK.