In January 2020 shortly before the COVID-19 lockdown I devised a new walking project that would take place on the Derbyshire moors. I was considering how I could further emphasize my aloneness and connection to remote sites as a solo walker. To camp out on the moors with a 16 mm camera felt like a logical progression. I have gained a closer connection to the observing changes in the landscape due to years of moorland restoration. In November 2020 during an easing of lockdown I walked with sphagnum moss planters on Featherbed Moss.
I shadowed these workers to remote moorlands on clear frosty days and wild ‘real hooley’ winter early mornings. My map reading skills were seriously challenged as I interpreted their moss planting maps to locate them. I documented my forays in peaty gullies, walking alongside the men as they marked out their planting amongst the cotton grasses.
@alisonclloyd on instagram and www.alisonlloyd.co.uk
Alison Lloyd is an artist whose work stretches back to the 1970’s. In 2014 she began to exhibit this work alongside new work with her exhibition Grains at TG Gallery in Nottingham. Through a passage of movement incorporating walking and dancing she has documented elements of her life. Her return to practice was driven by experiences as a recreational hill-walker, and from art literature which foregrounds historical walking practices, largely within the field of postmodern sculpture. Alison adapts navigation, route-finding skills and contouring as artistic strategies, tools and processes. In 2019 a PhD emerged, Contouring: Women, Walking and Art (2019).