One Year On
The golf course was for sale for two years, as a golf club, but no one bought it, and it closed down. It is now a year that the golf course has been empty and my blog covers that year to date. There are no physical signs yet of the mixed use development plans outlined by NewmanQuin. The Development Vision was prepared and presented to the local authority as a deliverable and sustainable proposal for the councils Local Plans.
I heard of another golf course which had closed down and the local authority had cemented up the holes to prevent members of the public getting free rounds of golf in. This never happened here and I did see a few practicing. It is all over grown now.
I will fess up and say I did actually fill one of the holes up with soil and plant some wild flowers seeds in there, but as with the rest of my guerilla wild flower planting scheme, nothing grew.
So anyway I have decided to post a handfull of drawings each month now, depicting some aspect of the site.
Here are my January Drawings.
I saw a green and red woodpecker in someones front garden just as I entered the golf course. I had never really seen one before, I made dummy ones painted them and screwed to some trees in the woods!
Today the golf course was busier than I ever saw it before! Not exactly Piccadilly Circus….but about 8-9 people including me, plus 2-3 dogs. I saw the left overs of snow-man fun, and was asked to take a photo on a blackbury of two young women sitting on the snow-sofa they just made. They were going to come back tomorrow with more girl power and build an igloo!
I did not build anything, but did notice that the majority of foot prints traversed the area from one side to the other, or place to place; yet I always skirt around the perimeter much less footprints almost none and I was the only person to have crossed the bridge near the overgrown 9th where the blue tent use to be.
The lonely horse was OK with a jacket on eating hay and Cosmo always seems to want to exit and go out past the graffiti tunnel under the motorway. I looked at the graffiti again and it reminded me of a book I read about cave paintings over the Xmas. Subterranean mysteries in remote places. Coded social meanings, and according to my book altered states of consciousness? probably true for some graffiti as well. The book also pointed out that without rebels, and what appears bad behaviour, taboos and bucking the system then society goes stale it needs refreshing….Did the graffiti writers want to change things I could read about their anger and feelings of hopelessness. These were the clearest messages they left behind in my language not theirs.
Back on the golf course which still has no sign of the diggers preparing groundworks for yet another architects master plan for a ‘designed on paper community’. What will the graffiti writers make of it? The architect who can build buildings like sculptures and try very hard. But real appropriate ideas and vision, that’s left to the everyday people who will live there. This is a ‘Place’ and that’s my job, my work as an artist.
So for the moment I am enjoying this being a non place.
