GUIDEline has been a project spanning over 4 years, focusing on an area of the Peak District National Park northwest boundary from Glossop to Diggle, which roughly equates to 16 miles of a mark on a map.
Over this time, our central line of enquiry within our collaborative practice has been the endeavour to understand a culturally produced landscape through links between ideas of class, access, decision making and the marks they leave, both physical and ephemeral.
To work within an idea – a boundary – that is both invisible and with no real physical presence, except for the odd sign or millstone, can be through its absence, how it disrupts and affects change though its imposition within the landscape: economic (land) values, people’s lived experience, navigation, to name a few.
This resulted in various artworks that have responded with the marks we make (seen and unseen), the conversations held, the artists we have collaborated with, as we walked this landscape.
We are currently completing our artist book as our final work. To view the project in more detail please go to www.guideline.org.uk.
“What will be left of all this? When our walks are over? Our conversations stop? When the lens of our cameras replaced? The photosensitive chemicals rinsed away? We slip our phones into our pockets? We unlace our boots? We return home? When we close our tabs and put our laptops to sleep? What will we have to show for it? Not that it matters, of course. What matters is that we did it. We did it. But we didn’t only do it for ourselves. How, then, to share it with others? With others not present? Or present from afar. Or present in the future. Because something changed. Something changed, and it matters. We think it matters but don’t wholly know why, don’t wholly know how.”
Extract from a new text for the book ‘When our walks are over’ by writer & artist Lizzie Lloyd.
