The Fairways

It had the potential to unfold badly.

I have’nt and wont be continuing with this blog for the foreseeable:

Thats because I cant go there anymore!

Lets say then this blog is officialy dormant.

No doubt things are happening there and the councils development plans I am sure are progressing.

The fact that it is just left hanging here slightly irritates me because it wont move forwards?

Because it has several hundred sheep grazing on it…….

That means I can’t walk my dog there. Sheep are a not going to bring out the type of behaviour a responcible dog owner can allow. In short create a stampede.

So my country park has been taken away from me as I cant afford the time to go there without my dog. The whole blog was really generated by him anyway.

I do actually think it’s great that there are sheep there. May be the council were spending too much on keep cutting the grass all the time, so grazing sheep solves it.

Why do they need to cut the grass?

My only guess can be that if wildlife began to return to a natural wild place then development plans may be thawrted. Like not being able to build new airports for london due to rare water birds established on the site etc.

It was funny the time I went there and didnt know the sheep were there. I reckon I sussed it about 4 seconds before my dog did. The reason I managed that is because I am 3-4 times taller than he is and I can see things further in the distance. Ground level is his domain.

I had to get him on the lead as quick as possible as I knew it would unfold badly.

All was well and I spoke with another dog owner who had his dog on the lead aswell, who said the grass cutting tractor caught fire about a week ago and a couple of days later the sheep arrived….and were continuing to arrive.

A dogwalk with a dog on the lead is not an enjoyable experience for either the one with 4 legs, or the one with two.

I decided to walk around ‘The swamp’ for a change. This is a part of the golf course I rarely go. On the way to it we discovered newly placed chestnut posts and wire blocking some pathways! Had to cross the brook of Plenty by using a pallet as a stepping stone. We also found a gate on the public footpath with a padlock on. So some real attempts to keep people out beginning to emerge now….Yet the path that bisects the area is totally unrestricted.

According to a security guard on the other side of the A299, who is based in a metal container next to engineering works, The Brook of Plenty which passes under the dual carridgeway has eroded its own tunnel walls and they have collapsed? This requires the lining for the tunnel under the road to be re-lined. Hence the generators and pumping water equipment causing the traffic diversion. Its only a small country lane and I expect hardly anyone has even noticed this.

We saw plenty of magpies and not a lot else apart from another dog walker…taking a strange route just outside the perimeter fence. I thought about following him, but as usual Cosmo wants to walk through the gate and down to where the graffiti tunnel is. I looked at the graffiti again and bits of it remind me of the layered drawings in the pre-historic Chauvet Caves. I can see layers where people spray on top of whats underneath, and this build up reminded me of the many drawings and engravings at the cave.

http://donsmaps.com/chauvetcave.html

This Cave was discovered for the first time less than 20 years ago and it contains the earliest ever examples of art. I find it extraordinary that it was never found before? When I have time I would like to look more closely at ‘Cave Paintings’ I know there is a show at the British Museum called Ice Age Art.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/ice_age_art/about_the_exhibition.aspx

Must get up to London to see that before the end of May.

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.

I went for a walk round the golf course last night in the dark…it was so dark… but on this occassion my dog (Cosmo) seemed keen to take a left out and along to the underpass under the dual carraidgeway. I let this happen as I could not see anything and the change might do me good……..WOW.

WOW…….I knew this underpass had graffitti all over it as I been through there on a number of occasions……….but I never been along it at night time before. It was lit up like a sports stadium waiting for the Olympic opening ceremony to start. in the complete darkness in the middle of nowhere……

I was actually blown away and spent 20 minutes looking really closely, trying to read, decipher it and find some way of interpreting it. The whole subway seemed more finished, both sides completely covered no background tiles visable anywhere. New work must have gone up covering years of tags and old stuff. I noticed several pieces dated 2012. I also noticed Eliza might have been doing grafitti in here for as long as ten years, going by tags a dates. I could almost say Eliza was the subject for many of the large lettering pieces. I thought it would be great to meet them, as what I was looking at here was a history of a group of people. History, but only allowed to use letter (ish) forms. Totaly abstract really, but I thought loaded with meaning if you were in the know. I wondered what Eliza and her mates were like at school? Was writing actually something they hated, was art a joke lesson, and if you asked them to keep a personal diary or scrapbook would they laugh and say ‘bcolokls mate’. I wanted to get the yard broom out of my workshop and sweep up all the litter, dust and bundles of leaflets/ papers to make it look good. As it is an intervention or an installation.

Why so austere around the letter idea, religious devotion to it.

I have been doing a lot of letters latley, very text based work, and suddenly I’ve seen letters and connected with it. I liked the similarity between grafitti and cave paintings many years ago, but I never really connected with grafitti even though I walked past it loads of times……and more surprizingly I even did a summer project (grafitti type) with kids living in a deprived area in the summer with spray cans. I was interested, but the funny thing was; even though I enabled them to do grafitti I was frozen out.

So as usuall then I want to explore something really interesting, but have more than I cope with in other areas on different themes. Perhaps thats what being an artist is and by being patient I can explore it and get paid to do it later. One year later, 5 years later who knows. But my next task is an illustration for an interpretation panel. A drawing of the ‘Radfall’ a droveway through Thordenwoods. I’m not even an illustrator! But it is one of the final things to complete for The Wildart Trail which I am responcible for.

see project blog below

http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.co.uk/