GPS Embroidery - On Cultivation

GPS Embroidery is an ongoing walking project that aims to broaden ideas about who-gets-to-write-what in and about the British landscape. “Embroidering” traces with a GPS tracker subverts traditional associations with women and domesticity, making a claim for female self-expression beyond the home.

“On Cultivation” brings well-known 18th century gardens into an irreverent conversation with this work. Landscape gardens are among England’s most celebrated artistic achievements, but they also arranged nature into expressions of taste, power and order that came at a cultural cost.

Blending the sublime and the beautiful through walking, these GPS Embroideries gently reflect on the ways we interpret the landscapes of the past at a time when many are reshaping our connections to these historic places.

Lizzie Philps is an artist and writer with a background in site-specific and environmental performance. Participatory works include Acts of Invisible Repair with AHRC/Exeter University (2021), a response to the tidal issues of Jersey with the Live Art Development Agency (2017), and an immersive performance about the extinction of birdlife at We The Curious, Bristol (2010). Lizzie has a PhD in Performance Practice, and her writings exploring the relationships between women and landscape have been published by Routledge and Demeter Press, as well as in several international journals. She will be creating a series of exhibitions, walks and writings at Hestercombe in 2025-26 as part of a DYCP grant from the Arts Council.

www.lizziephilps.com

www.gps-embroidery.com

Future exhibitions( details to follow)

March/April: Plant experiments

May/June: The Blue of Distance