Art   

An art project for the Lincolnshire Coast; “In Search of Albion, expectation in the foreign and nostalgia.”

To read comments left about this stage of the project, click here

"In search of Albion", sunrise at Chapel Point.

The project is temporary outdoor art installation which will be shown at various venues on the Lincolnshire Coast during the summer of 2007. The installation comprises four iconic objects, the deckchair, beach umbrella and bucket and spade. they are all scaled up in size, the deckchair 2.5:1 the parasol  2:1 the bucket and spade 5:1.

The work seeks to examine our lack of contentment in the present and our perpetual search for a permanent stress free home for the self in the future. Today this search seems to be located primarily in foreign places or nostalgia.

About the Project:

The Objective: The project is aimed at exploring the contemporary passion for  travel, its roots and consequences, and research and express the public engagement with the work in a way relevant to contemporary audiences.

What it will be: The installation will comprise an outdoor installation which will take the iconic form of a deckchair, parasol, bucket and spade 3:1 scale.

A postcard of the work will be free to the interested viewers to post to family and friends, a condition of receiving the free postcard will be the recording the messages people write on the rear of the postcard (examples of how the postcard could look can be seen below), or there thoughts on horizons and destinations beyond in the comments book accompanying the work.

Where: The piece will be sighted in three holiday locations along the Lincolnshire Coast during the summer of 2007 and will be developed to take further a field in the following years. These are, 1. Chapel St. Leonards, 2. Skegness and 3. Anderby Creek.  click on each name to link to a location map.

Images of the installation:

Dimensions: Deckchair 2200 x 3000 x 1600mm, Beach Umbrella: height 4000mm diameter 3500mm,

                       Bucket: height 1000mm diameter 800mm, Spade:1230 x 430 x 60mm

An interesting development at this stage is the scale of the piece, the scale can be seen easily in the postcard below with an adult in the image, but the images above with no scale reference and the vastness of the beach can alter the reading of the work. It will be interesting to work with this as the project continues. 

 The Postcard:

The phrase “Wish you were here” seems to express the paradox of our search, we want and seek new destinations, but we need our links to our home as we need to share this new experience with those we have left behind.

A statement giving a background to the project: On questions of travel, dislocation and nostalgia.

‘It seems to me that I would always be better of where I am not, and this question of moving is one of those I discuss incessantly with my soul."

                                                                                                Charles Baudelaire.

As a society we are captivated by new destinations, both spiritual and worldly, immersed in a search for something that will fill a sense of lack we cannot locate in our present temporal and spatial home. In a world incessantly “becoming” something else, we try to locate improved futures in examination historical events, but both the future we desire and the past we examine have taken on the quality of permanence both temporally and spatially, they are places where we imagine we cease ‘becoming’. This sense of permanence, given especially to nostalgic memories we transfer to our ambitions for the future, we avidly want to ‘arrive’, we want to cease ‘becoming’ and ‘become’ content, but the narrative never stops.

In her book ‘Questions of Travel’; Caren Kaplan describes tourism as heralding the post-modern. ‘It is a product of the rise of consumer culture, leisure and technological innovation’. She also examines the origins of what is nostalgia in Western Culture, often born in forced exile from homeland, family and language. As a Scot I am aware of many historical instances of forced exile, one such event being the Highland Clearances. Many Scots chose exile through circumstance, chiefly poverty, providing European armies throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries with countless mercenaries. This sense of displacement is frequently interpreted and celebrated in the traditional songs and poetry of Scotland. Today we attach these nouveau feelings of loss to the inescapable temporal dislocation of a lived life.

Renato Rosald adds further insights into this process and comments on how as architects of the future we simultaneously destroy the present and give birth to nostalgias:

“Nostalgia is often found under imperialism, where people mourn the passing of something they themselves have transformed” and is “a process of yearning, for what one has destroyed that is a form of mystification." 

                                                                                                  (Renato Rosald)

One source where we search try to fill the sense of ‘lack in our lives are exotic travel brochures and as we anticipate our next destination we are seduced by the idyllic images, reality airbrushed out of the images, unquestioned in the readers mind. How easily we forget fretful children, litter, the attentions of street sellers and the building site now gracing the sea view from the hotel balcony as we anticipate new journeys and destinations in a shrinking post-modern world. 

How will the project expresses the ideas:

The project will look at firstly, our desire to be "anywhere else but where we are at present", (as Baudelaire put it), secondly, the disregard of reality in the anticipation process to travelling; and thirdly, the idea of a space as a temporal as well as a physical site.

Strand 1: The first idea is expressed by placing the installation looking out towards the horizon. The horizon is a border an edge to our own space beyond which there are imagined utopias where we will find contentment; where we can see or imagine other travellers achieving some kind of Nirvana in imagined utopias both actual and metaphysical.

Strand 2: When we look at travel brochures or look at holiday programmes on television we are shown and anticipate destinations devoid of fretful children, regulations, building sites and litter etc. etc. Much as we are aware of the pitfalls of visiting different cultures, the possibility for disappointment is almost forgotten as we anticipate our dream location. This ability to enlarge our expectations is reflected in the size of the piece, two and a half times normal size.

Strand 3: The historical and nostalgic possibilities for space. The deckchair and the parasol iconic pieces which reflect a bygone era, linking times in the same space, buckets and spade linked to our childhood.

Completed Project Statistics:

N.B. The estimate for the viewing audience is purely guesswork, as the piece was sighted between the large north car park and access to the central beach in Skegness numbers who saw the work were certainly much higher, also being sited 200yds north of the pier the work was in a prominent position. The estimated numbers are for those we thought took note of the work without the direct engagement of commenting on the work or taking photographs within the work. 

The figure for the Festival of Bathing Beauties weekend are not included in the totals as this event was not a part of the original project proposal. 

Some images from the project: