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In The Open | Abigail Goodman & Andrew Jeffrey

Abi Goodman is a geographer, visual artist and critical designer. She makes art that engages with political debates. Her current practice focuses on the conception and making of artist books. Her book ‘Capitalism 24,902’was shortlisted for the Sheffield International Book Artist prize in 2015, whilst her book (and accompanying wallpaper) ‘Addiction’ was selected for exhibition at Manchester School of Art’s Vertical Gallery Jun-Oct 2015. She currently has work represented by the Paper Gallery, Manchester. Her blog is: http://abigoodman.com.

Andrew Jeffrey is a practice based Creative Writing PhD candidate at Sheffield Hallam University writing about encounters with animals in The Moss Valley (on the Sheffield/Derbsyhire border). Recent poems have appeared in ‘Matter’, ‘Route 57’ and ‘Plumwood Mountain Review’ and his work has been exhibited at the Millenium Galleries (Sheffield).  His blog is: http://cowyidentity.wordpress.com.

Stiles of the Moss Valley

BS5709:2006 sets out eight rules for gaps and stiles to be compliant with current access regulations. As a technology of power, control and access every stile displays a tension between current access legislation and what is accepted as being “historically lawful”.   Stiles of the Moss Valley is a collaboratively produced artist book that consists of eight pages which take their titles from the eight rules and make use of the visual language of the stile. The stile marks a point of pause in a journey where the walker is both forced to negotiate with constraint, to take an elevated view of the landscape and to reflect upon the variety of British discourses used to characterise the many stiled patchwork landscape of Moss Valley.