Little Deluxe Living

Date: 2007
Co-producers: Grizedale Arts, Northern Art Prize
Collaborators: Online editor Sue Giovanni, music Tim Olden

'Little Deluxe Living' is a short film (15 mins) about the ambivalence of the rural idyll as played out in England and in Japan.
Filmed during our artists' residency in Japan and at Karen's home in the iconic Lake District countryside, it features the village women of Toge & two men, both obsessed with architectural heritage in very different ways - David Tate and Karl Bengs. David is the founder of Lilliput Lane in Cumbria (makers of cute collectable house miniatures) and a passionate advocate of British vernacular architecture. Karl is an emigre German craftsman/designer who has devoted his working life to saving traditional Japanese homes - building his own utopian village just across the valley from Toge.

Little Deluxe Living was part of the exhibition that won Pope & Guthrie the 2008 Northern Art Prize.