Washed-out photographs flap in the breeze. It’s some kind of installation or intervention; some kind of provocation concerning the loss of fields and what used to be called communities. This one shows a pasture with animals of some kind – cows or dinosaurs or dogs – and here is a house for four-to-six people, with folding beds and ashtrays in every room. On this very spot stood a shop which sold canned goods and flags, with kindling for Guy Fawkes’ birthday and a range of seasonal and gender-appropriate gifts for family members and acquaintances of varying degrees of intimacy. They all bordered this quintessentially English space, before the crash barriers and cracked tarmac. Can you believe it? There was even a university, where they taught prison officers to lock up their tongues and they taught cocky boys to leave their guns at home. I ask you: what was the artist thinking here? What happens when the photos fade and even the pegs and fine wires are forgotten? Should we plant a sapling with a bright brass plaque? Should we erect billboards with provocatively blank signs?
Oz Hardwick
Photo Nick Victor