Synopsis
In 'The Pattern' artists Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith, in their multi-layered personae of Crab & Bee and Smoke & Mirrors, offer a handbook for exploration, embodiment and art making in strange times. Uncovering a tattoo in the landscape, they describe the secrets of ‘web-walking’ and a journey of remarkable encounters. Setting out to walk the margins of Plymouth (UK), using a labyrinth as a mental map, they found themselves exposed to a weird and ailing world of buried rivers, needle-strewn woodlands and heritage sites repurposed as smack dens. In response, as both survival-strategy and poiesis, the authors reinvented themselves and their journey as a ‘fictioning’, generating multiple identities and joining in with numerous long-running stories. Rather than just walking the path, in their new personae they could become entangled with it and found themselves spun out in an ever widening series of quests that took in the Scilly Isles, South Wales, Yorkshire and East Anglia. In the face of looming division and climate catastrophe, the terrain itself seemed to be knitting together its own responses and Crab, Bee, Smoke & Mirrors followed the threads. On dragon hills and in white springs, along red paths and at the ‘edge of the known world’, they intuited signposts in the landscape to a way of making art and being in the world; this is the route map they left behind.
About the Author
Helen Billinghurst is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, researcher and writer. With a background as a film maker, she now works within the expanded fields of painting and drawing. Her recent doctoral research at the University of Plymouth explored the intersection between studio practice and aesthetic walking. She currently lectures at Plymouth College of Art, and her research interests include the performance of making, site-specificity and embodied process. In 2014 Helen was resident artist for six months at High Cross House in Dartington, Devon. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Crossing England’ (Arial Centre, Totnes, 2016), ‘Embodied Cartographies’ (Walcot Gallery, Bath Fringe Festival curated by Fay Stevens, 2016), ‘English Diagrams’ (Royal William Yard, Plymouth, 2018) and ‘Walking Diagrams’ (Walking’s New Movements Conference, University of Plymouth, 2019). Other recent commissions include an article for the catalogue of ‘Dear Christine’, (a touring exhibition about the life of Christine Keeler, by women artists, curated by Fionn Wilson, 2019). Collaborating with Phil Smith as Crab & Bee, Helen makes walks, performances, poetry and exhibitions. They have worked together on an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth’ (funded by Arts Council England), and a residency at Teats Hill slipway (for Take Apart, Plymouth, 2019). They are writing a new book, The Pattern based on walks across Southern England and Wales. Dr. Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies and counter-tourism. With artist Helen Billinghurst, he is one half of Crab & Bee, who have recently completed an exhibition and walking project called ‘Plymouth Labyrinth (funded by Arts Council England), a short walking project in the Isles of Scilly and a residency at Teats Hill slipway. They are currently engaged in a series of walks across the UK researching their forthcoming book, The Pattern (2020). With Tony Whitehead and photographer John Schott, Phil recently published Guidebook for an Armchair Pilgrimage with Triarchy Press. He is currently developing a ‘subjectivity-protective movement practice’ with Canada-based choreographer Melanie Kloetzel. With Claire Hind and Helen Billinghurst, he co-organised the 2019 ‘Walking’s New Movements’ conference at the University of Plymouth. As company dramaturg and co-writer for TNT Theatre (Munich), he most recently premiered ‘Free Mandela’, co-authored with TNT’s artistic director Paul Stebbings, about the end of apartheid in South Africa. Paul and Phil are presently working on a book about TNT Theatre’s transformation from tiny experimental theatre company to global touring organisation. Phil is a member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, who recently published The Architect-Walker (2018). As well as Walking Stumbling Limping Falling (2017) with poet Alyson Hallett, Phil’s publications include Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance (Red Globe/Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Rethinking Mythogeography (2018) (with US photographer John Schott), Anywhere (2017), A Footbook of Zombie Walking and Walking’s New Movement (2015), On Walking and Enchanted Things (2014), Counter-Tourism: The Handbook (2012) and Mythogeography (2010). He is an Associate Professor (Reader) at the University of Plymouth.
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