Dr Skulk & Dr Guiser’s End Game: rules for mumming in a Time of Virus is a slightly unhinged booklet of stories, drawings and ‘games’ to be played either outside in the landscape or at home during lockdown. The material was gathered by Smoke & Mirrors (AKA Crab & Bee, AKA Phil Smith & Helen Billinghurst) from walks taken around Tamar River system (Rivers Tamar, Hamoaze, Tavy and Lhyner), shortly before and during the earliest days of lockdown, 2020. On publication, free copies (with accompanying feedback forms) were sent out to volunteers across the UK. Subsequently, the handbook was used by participants for a variety of activities that summer: as a map to walk the river systems of East Anglia, a guide to gameboard gardening, and as instructions for late-night drinking games.
Helen Billinghurst is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, film, poetry and performance. Her doctoral thesis explored the relationship between walking and making artworks in the studio. Solo exhibitions include Crossing England (2016), English Diagrams (2018) and Walking Diagrams (2019). Helen works in collaboration with Phil Smith as one half of creative duo Crab & Bee; their main focus is to explore and reveal the secrets of everyday spaces through artworks, publications, readings, scryings and performances.