Line(s) of Enquiry is a collaborative project facilitated by Zoe Ashbrook, Richard Keating, Ruth Broadbent, Valerie Coffin Price of Walking the Land and Sarah Bowden Director of Hardwick Gallery (University of Gloucestershire). Fourteen artists will present an exhibition of artwork, writing, research, and exploratory materials at Hardwick Gallery between 3rd March – 27th March 2025. Alongside the exhibition a First Friday Walk and Private View are planned for 7th March and a symposium is planned for Friday 21 March 2025 with invited guest speakers where walking is a significant part of their practice. We will also be joined by University of Gloucestershire researchers from the Fine Art department and CCRI (Countryside & Community Research Institute). Providing an opportunity to share more widely, and discuss in greater depth, outcomes from the project.
Events
3 -27 March – Exhibition at Hardwick Gallery
7 March – First Friday Walk along the Honeybourne Line
7 March – Exhibition Private View
21 March Line(s) of Enquiry Symposium at University of Gloucestershire.
About the Project
For the past 18 months, WtL has held a number of First Friday Walks to observe and engage with the Honeybourne Line, a former railway track that is now a green corridor connecting communities in the north of Cheltenham, including Hardwick Campus, to the High Street and mainline station in the south.
Image: Ruth Broadbent
This durational engagement has enabled a sustained dialogue with the greenway, looking beyond the track’s use and purpose to understand the Honeybourne Line through its ecologies: as topography, as habitat, as network, as archive, a carrier of histories, a living museum, as a place of movement, pause and transient encounters. By approaching each artist’s creative engagement as a layer in the mapping of the past, present and future of this (and other) public space(s), WtL extends the collective imaginary of the Honeybourne Line to, it is hoped, cultivate a deeper connection between people and environment.
Artists taking part in the project who live further afield in Stroud, Nailsworth, Cirencester, Oxfordshire, Cardiff, Somerset and Edinburgh, have been invited to locate and engage with a linear route closer to home that resonates with the brief, in a form of linked study to bring another layer of research and contemplation to the project and will also feature as part of the exhibition and symposium.
To contextualise the exhibition within a wider field of practices, Walking the Land and Hardwick Gallery have coordinated a day-long symposium of discussions and workshops at the University of Gloucestershire (UoG). Following an introduction to the project by Zoe Ashbrook and Sarah Bowden, we will hear from WtL artists Janette Kerr, Ruth Broadbent, Valerie Coffin Price, Amanda Steer about their relationship to line, drawing and location. Jean Boyd, Dan Keech and Sarah Bowden will approach the exhibition as a thought experiment and discuss what the project initiates. After lunch and the opportunity to take part in a group walking/drawing session with our guest panellists and WtL artists, the final discussion between Clare Qualmann, Richard Keating, and Paul Wakelam will explore ideas around walking as a creative, collaborative practice.
Entry to the symposium is free. There is limited capacity – if you book and find you can no longer attend, please return to Eventbrite and cancel your ticket so that it can be released to someone else.
Book your ticket via Eventbrite here : https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lines-of-enquiry-symposium-tickets
Entwined with over a century of social history, traces of former life are abundantly evident. Line(s) of Enquiry enables us to demonstrate the value of artistic research by looking beyond a track’s use and purpose to understand the lines being explored through their ecologies: as topography, as habitat, as archive, as carrier of histories, as living museum, as network, as a place of movement, pause and transient encounters.
Fourteen Walking the Land artists have engaged with their Line(s) of Enquiry collectively through a series of shared seasonal First Friday Walks which also serve as research and stimulus for their individual creative responses. Generating engagement, dialogue and knowledge exchange through these shared walks, artistic practice and action research. Bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to consider the many possible lines of enquiry these tracks now present.
Image: Zoe Ashbrook
As a thought experiment, Line(s) of Enquiry allows us to consider these redundant railway lines as uncharted territory, to peel away what we know and reveal that which is made visible. The project can be understood as a ‘halt’ within the timeline of these lines, an opportunity to analyse the organisation of spatial, temporal and social fields of action at a particular point in their existence, specifically with art as the driver/producer of new knowledge, as a means to permeate the status quo, and develop spaces for critical engagement, affective encounter, and relational learning in the everyday.
Artists
Zoe Ashbrook, Chris Bingle, Ruth Broadbent, Tamsin Grainger, Lucy Guenot, Ruth Illingworth, Richard Keating, Janette Kerr, Kate McMahon-Parkes , Caroline Morris, Valerie Coffin Price, Amanda Steer, Nik Taylor, Susie Walker.
