Struck down by a cold of great magnitude, snotty nosed and breathless, I considered it wise not to cycle the streets of Liverpool, but take a few days off and switch my attention to other matters. Instead of ‘the other matters’, I found myself pontificating over something one of the Newcastle art students had said…
“Yes, but what is it you are doing? I don’t understand what you do – it’s not like painting…”

Perhaps their question has more to do with…
“Why is this art?” or “Is it art?”
The answer to these questions is in the realms of academic theory – not my blogspot ramblings.
But not wishing to be totally evasive on the subject of ‘art’… I thought I should tap out some thoughts on the subject…
I re-present landscapes within a creative framework, as I see and experience them. I am representing what I see. My representation might not be in a traditional medium – painting, sculpture, etc, but non-the-less, I am challenging ideas of aesthetics and ways of seeing (At this pint I could reference John Bergers Book “Ways of Seeing”, but shan’t).
In liverpoolwastelands? I am engaged in a creative process that could be described as Performative Happening, or process-based artwork. It also has other names like slow activism, socially engaging, and new genre public art. Arising from arts practice that was pushing boundaries and challenging Fine Art as defined by hierarchical institutions, the critical debate began in the United States well over a decade ago. In 1995 American artist Suzanne Lacy edited and co authored “Mapping The Terrain – New Genre Public Art”, in which radically different working methods of artists were debated within the context of art history and (the then current) [public] art criticism. In Chapter 1, Mary Jane Jacobs critiques process-based work far more eloquently than I care to on this blogspot. When Jacobs writes “the roots of these changes can be found in artists’ practices of the last 25 years…”(p52), add a year for the writing and publishing, and another 11 to bring us into 2006, plus the 25, and you get a conservative estimate of a 37 year history of arts practice that is process based, of the every day, part of the environment, and outside of the establishment. In the last Chapter, Suzanne Lacy writes, “what artists do and what they “ought” to do constitutes a territory for public debate in which we seek a broadening paradigm for the meaning of art in our times” (p171). For those of you who are interested and would like to know more – please do read the book. In fact, re reading the book whilst in my ‘sick bed’, it struck me that it could have been newly published; ‘process as product’ is still debated, and in Public Art often under accepted in the U.K.
For years I have earned my crust as a public artist and have to say, business is far more lucrative when I make a product – the majority of commissioners literally like to see what they are paying for. And a shifting practice from object based to process based perturbs some people. If what an artist does doesn’t fit the perception of what art is then perhaps it is something else…?
During the past 12 months, M.A. Fine Art lectures and post-graduate and undergraduate students studying art have proposed the following about my work:
All begin with “So are you…
…more of a social worker?
…an ecologist?”
…a conservationist?”
…a social activist?”
And the answer is No to all of the above – I am in fact an artist interested in All the above…
And this way of working’s got a history of 37 years – it’s is nothing new, which is a crying shame as I would love to be a pioneer, a true pusher of boundaries and shifter of paradigms…
There are many artists practicing process-based, socially engaging etc. etc. artwork. Often this type of work takes place in ‘hard to reach’ communities or non-predictable places - like wastelands. Because an end product is not the focus of the work, there is not always something concrete to exhibit. Artists I have spoken with who work in this way often discuss how best to record, and/or show their process artwork. But the problem is; if you start to think about ‘exhibition’ or public art product, you can easily compromise the process. So you don’t often see this type of work in galleries – and therefore it tends to remain low profile work.
I find out about artists working in this way through searching the web, reading art journals and books, and going to artist’s talks and conferences.
Two artists in the Independents Biennial who work in this way spring to mind – Nina Edge and Jean Grant. And there are likely to be others…

01/11/06

Brilliant sunshine, blue sky, and not a cloud in sight – a glorious autumnal day

In a corner of the city centre known as the Baltic Triangle is one of the UK’s largest exhibition spaces, the A Foundation. Launched during this year’s Biennial, it’s opening exhibition included work by Goshka Macuga, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Grizedale Arts and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

www.afoundation.org.uk

Outside the A Foundation is where I gracefully began my day… by falling backwards over, and landing on top of my bike… legs akimbo, and my cone crooked I worked against gravity to return both wheels and feet to the tarmac. As I approach verticality…
“Are you Kerry?”
Finally I get to meet the Creative Facilitator for the Independents Biennial, John Brady.
And for the record, the first photo of my bike and me next to a near-by White tag Brownfield – cheers John.
But I can only offer you yet another pic of my bike without me.

I make my way to a rendezvous – Fine Art students from Newcastle University visiting the Biennial. Huddled on a street corner next to a fenced Brownfield we talk about my project.
We were stood in front of a Brownfield totally covered with plant life including: clovers, mare’s tail, small Budlea bushes, dandelions, brambles, willow herb, and other tall herbs.
Could they tell me why they think spaces like this tend to be amongst our least cherished and least valued of urban habitats?
I asked them to imagine this square corner plot without the 8 ft high security fencing around it.
How does it look to them?

I can’t recall their responses in a verbatim fashion – so I’m paraphrasing

“The space has no order, it is chaotic, and spaces in chaos attract litter”
“I come from a design background, and there is no design in that space”
“I think it’s to do with social behaviour – more specifically, rooted to how we tend our gardens. It is antisocial to let your garden become overgrown with plants that we call weeds, plants that can disperse their seeds into your neighbour’s garden. So we try to keep our gardens under control. So these un-gardened spaces could be viewed as out of control, and therefore anti-social”
“But I think the space is attractive, it’s just about perception”
“If you were to remove the fence and call that space Public Art, I think more people would appreciate it”

I wish I could have spent more time with the students, but they had a hectic schedule – lots of art to see – and we were stood in shadow, and it was too bloody cold to linger.
I hope they can find some time to post their comments… I’m pretty sure what they have to say will make for interesting reading.

The Baltic Triangle…
11 Brownfields
2 completely boarded off. Having already been in one compromising position today – I didn’t fancy getting into another – so therefore I didn’t evaluate them.
Nestled together in and area which is not even a grid square in you’re A-Z…
The Baltic Triangle is an eclectic mix of architecture, people, and use. Formidable brick warehouses, modern industrial units, impressive Georgian town houses (opposite a post-modern city park), small residential houses, social and private, (opposite a derelict recreation ground), luxury new build apartments, one with a very private walled courtyard – which, I was told, by a chap up a ladder fixing a camera to the external wall, was paved with granite slabs and had a few pots containing shrubs – and all sheltered from the rain by a canopy.
"What exactly is the canopy?" I asked
“Is an architect’s vision – architects have visions you know…”
He went on…
“It’s supposed to reflect the history of the area – its nautical…is that the right word?”
Good question…
Now this particular block of apartments overlooks an electricity sub station – and I do feel this particular sub station is worth a mention because it has been landscape designed… a striking stripy gravel design with sunken lighting …
But sadly, even when someone does introduce order – and you can’t get much more orderly than parallel lines - idiots still dump their crap.

Continuing with the eclectic mix… a Swedish Church, a Catholic primary school, a classic Victorian pub – the Baltic Fleece, a McDonalds, and an amazing art venue.

Walking from the city centre through China Town, you enter the Baltic Triangle via the refurbished Great George Square.

www.liverpool.gov.uk/News/archive/2004/september/news0865.asp

A large open space of lawn, gravel pathways, bespoke seating, and lighting. Granite slabs around the edges of the lawn area are carved with text. One section reads...
“people – what are we? We wish our lives away until we can wish no more – we wonder what life is – life is a gift and if we wish it away then we shall not get anything from it – you and I have a gift – we should use it well”

A few yards from Great George Square, away from the views of Georgian houses and apartments, and opposite the neatly kept family homes, is a derelict space. Formerly a recreation area, it is now a Brownfield site. The once pink 5-aside soccer surface looks grubby with a green film growing over it, and the goal posts are broken. Unkempt, the vegetation around the edges has become overgrown, and intermingled with litter. Stood at the opening in the fence I watched and listened to the black birds and blue tits as they darted around in front of me. I was about to enter the site to investigate what else lay within when I guy on a bike approached me.
“Don’t leave your bike there love” As the words came out of his mouth I became transfixed by his one and only tooth, bottom jaw, right in the middle. He was rugged looking, I guess in his thirties, but difficult to tell.
“If you leave your bike there they’ll av it”
He pointed at two young men on the corner of Great George Square
“They told me, even if you leave it chained up they’ll av it. Don’t leave it. They’ll av the chain off and you wont see it again. They want your bike”
“Really? Is it that bad around here?” I asked
“Oh yeh”
I thanked him, and he cycled off.
So around here is both “that bad” and “that good”.
Having been kindly warned, I didn’t venture onto the abandoned recreation ground, but non-the-less, from where I was standing, I could see that this space had a greater value for experiencing nature than Great George Square has. And to be able to appreciate the sights, the sounds, and the scents of this city wildlife habitat, all it seemed to need was cleaning-up, some lighting, some seats, and NO fence.
I cycled off past the two young guys who had been joined by the tooth man, and nodded at them politely.

At each of the 11 brownfield sites, attempts have been made to keep people out, all had an 8ft high barriers around.
At 2 of the sites the barriers have been breeched, the recreation ground, and a site next to McDonalds.
Of the 9 sites I could actually look into, 8 were brimming with wild flora and grasses. 2 were litter free and looked positively park like.

My cycling day ended where it began – back at the A Foundation.
That evening a journalist told me that the A Foundation’s location was a strategic decision – to stretch the city limits into the far corner of the Baltic Triangle.
Nice thought… but it’s not the attraction of art that will stretch the city limits but investment from the private sector. Art will enhance the cultural credibility.
Watch the Triangle…
It’s a prime location –
Of my many miles of dock road travels this are is noticeably different. Easy walking distance to the heart of the city centre, the Albert Dock, both Cathedrals, and the soon to be Paradise shopping complex.
A Liverpool based artist and colleague told me she had tried (in vane) to buy one of the warehouses. Her vision was to create an artist live-work space. But the developers got the lot (double entendre)
Check out Billion pound village for Baltic Triangle at

www.residentialreview.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=196

“Great! more trendy apartments way out of local people’s price range. No doubt gated off to keep undesirables out. Seems the regeneration of Liverpool is very selective benefiting the few. I am starting to feel the 08 Culture bid is becoming a poison chalice.”
Not about the Baltic Triangle, but a poignant comment regarding regeneration in the city by Lance Rock posted on

http://www.bbc.co.uk:80/liverpool/content/articles/2005/10/29/regeneration_littlewoods_feature.shtml


Cycling around Liverpool evaluating Brownfield sites, it is difficult to extract the ecological without becoming acutely aware of the sociological.
From Garston to Canada Docks, it appears that Brownfield wildlife is endangered – not unexpected as Brownfields are transient spaces, but scarily it appears that people communities are under threat of being bulldozed out too.

Regeneration is looking like a double-edged sword. Is the reality that Liverpool’s citizens are being squeezed out? I keep hearing the term ‘investment property’. I’m not entirely sure what it means – but it doesn’t sound very sociable or neighbourly…
And if people communities are being disrupted and transposed – what chance for the wildlife communities?

02/11/06

Brilliant sunshine, blue sky, not a cloud in sight, but bitterly cold.

It’s time to explore the city centre –
The city centre seems to be loosely defined by a series of connected roads that circumference a space containing the main shopping centre, the major museums and galleries, China Town, and what appears to be a business quarter – lots of people wearing suits. You instinctively feel when you have entered the ‘centre'; empirically it has a different atmosphere and different physicality.
A city’s centre is a place where all citizens belong. You don’t feel like you are entering someone’s territory. 6 weeks of cycling and this is the first time that I have felt I have given right to be in a place – although I still feel ‘out of place’. It’s the first day in 6 weeks that I’ve been surrounded by people. I’m sure I must stick out, with the bike and the cone and the clip board, yet no-one acknowledges me.
City centres are very people populated, vibrant, busy, bustling places. But there’s not much space for curiosity or idle conversations on the busy city streets. How we move around a city differs greatly from the way in which we move around other urban settings. We weave amongst one another, rarely making eye contact. We go into the city to shop, to work, to meet friends, to drink, to dine, etc.
I think we have many specific requirements of a city centre, and I don’t think experiencing wildlife is necessarily one of them. I’ve never gone into a city for this reason. The kind of nature I welcome in a city centre comes in the landscaped package of clean and relaxing city park, short grass, a few trees perhaps, and maybe a few flowers. A place to sit and eat sandwiches bought from an expensive deli, a moment of tranquillity to people watch whist sipping cappuccino. When I am in a city I want “Sex in the City” not “Nature Watch”. I am Carrie, not Oddie – usually…
I don’t think I’ve ever before gone into a city to do something other than a city centric ‘activity’. Entering the throngs to evaluate wildlife is a first.
(Having said that, I have been on one of David Hayley’s “Walk on the Wildside” events, walking the canal networks of Manchester’s city centre. But most of this network is subterranean, underused by people, and lacking that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ city aesthetic.)

So I didn’t much enjoy my city centre day out. I felt grubby, and wanted to disappear, a bit hard with a Day-Glo decorated Independents cone strapped to the pannier rack of a shiny framed but muddy-wheeled bike.
But, being the trooper that I am I persevered.
On a city centre street level, the most obvious wildlife species is humankind. So much so, that if pigeons weren’t so prolific, we would look like a monoculture swarming across the ‘urban jungle’. Liverpool City centre, like any other, is teaming with people. But in Liverpool, a higher than normal percentage of this species is clad in high visibility fluorescent yellow jackets. Building work seems to be everywhere. And high-rise cranes dominate the city centre skyline.

By the end of my day in the city I had recorded 5 Brownfield sites, was able to evaluate 4, and had cycled a staggering, yet slightly unbelievable, 7 miles.

And I had one interesting conversation… down by “Penelope” the playful piece of public art in the Rope Works clubbing quarter. By day, a quieter part of the city, but quite different by night, as I recall from my youthful dancing days at La Bateau in the mid the 90’s.
Granada Reports were out roaming the streets of Liverpool filming art and culture. A very nice lady told me all about “Penelope”: it’s site-specific connection to the Rope Works and it’s nautical theme derived from Homer’s Odyssey. Glad she told me, not with all my years of art training would I have been able to work that one out. To me “Penelope” is a bright, cheerful, larger than life, bendy tubular steel, big baubley, lollypop like, lighting piece of public art - not a Greek Tragedy tied up in rope.
I told her all about “liverpoolwastelands?” – but sadly, no offer of a feature on Granada Reports was forthcoming…

In the interim… apart from there being a blog server error – and not being able to upload my latest encounters…

On a safety conscious note - Whist wondering around my local market my eyes were attracted to an acid green item hanging on a rail of coats –
A bunch of Dahlias, a cup of coffee, and a couple of bag of veg later, I decide to ditch the grey cagoule in favour of a more luminescent waterproof –
So from now on I will be cycling the streets in a rain jacket the colour of a Sun Spurge, just like those I found growing in the Garden Festival car park… a tad out of season…

Much safer and - if raincoats ever can be – trendier too. Now I should be very visible!

24/10/06

Rain then fabulous sunshine and blue skies – all topped off with an amazing sunset

From Otterspool to just beyond the Garden Festival Site and back again – on road and off road and along the Promenade

About to mount my bike - music from the nearby ice cream van blasts out
“Rawhide!”
It couldn’t have been more apt...

A slow start, from the outset I was far too distracted by the late blooms of flowers. The curse of the curious – it takes ages to get anywhere…
Recognising this I remounted my bike - for the umpteenth time in a few hundred yards – and set off in a determined fashion along the clearly defined desire tracks over the rough grassland south of the Garden Festival Site. This tract of land sandwiched between the manicured parkland of Otterspool and the derelict land of the Garden Festival site, appears to be common land, open, and accessible for public use. But there is no mistaking the entering of the Brownfield land – the disused Garden Festival Site car park – clearly demarcated by fence posts, some still connected with chain-link fencing. Off my bike on this boundary line I pause for a while to take in the view. What I know is in front of me is the tree canopy of the Garden Festival site with the Anglican Cathedral tower beyond - a landmark of the City centre. But at the same time what I see is a vision of the rural idyll – rolling countryside, a coppice, and the distant village church on the horizon. It’s a question of perception, what we want to see...

20 years of slow decline, the site languishes derelict, and we have an eyesore yet again… is how the Land Restoration Trust have described this land.

Stood there, just looking, initially it’s only the fence dissecting the two tracts of land that distinguishes the Brownfield derelict wasteland from the common grassland.
Walking on the [waste] land reveals a different reality.
My footsteps sound soft on the dense carpet of grasses – then Crunchhhhhh… the sound of plastic being crushed underfoot. I have to pull back long tufts of grass to find the source of the sound - a plastic milk carton. Wasteland becomes a fitting description again – domestic waste and building waste – no longer quite so visible – but still there.
Sat on a concrete outcrop I watch the Skylarks swoop down beside an old washing machine – rusted – and all but covered in brambles… and a young man on a trails bike.
The muddy tracks across the site are embossed with tyre marks – they mark the way to the disused car park where 2 young men in the middle of the car park take turns to ride a trails bike. We clock each other…
The young men must have been as wary of me as I was of them – a little nervously we acknowledged each other – then – as our paths cross – the briefest of verbal encounters…
“hi”
“hi”
They leave – one riding pillion

Alone in the sunken clearing of tarmac strewn with shattered glass and defunct lighting columns I feel apprehensive and on-edge. Primeval instinct laced with crime fiction - that uneasy feeling of being watched but not being able to see by whom. I had been very happy skirting around the edges, lifting bits of rotting carpet and old dustbin lids to find what lay beneath – but out on the tarmac ‘Savannah’ I felt like prey/victim – although fascinated by the plant life literally erupting in places through the tarmac – I was too uneasy to linger longer.

Stepping through the gate back onto the public highway in full vision of people driving along Riverside Drive – my mood shifts -
On this side of the car park gate I happily evaluate the site - a Red

5 young people stroll past me
“C’mon gang – let’s head for home…” this side of the fence they were Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five”

I follow them to the Pelican Crossing near Gate 14 of the Garden Festival.

The Liverpool Garden Festival was built on 27 hectares of derelict dockland site and cost an equivalent of £48 million in today’s money. In 1984 when it opened, it was the first of its kind in Britain - a "five month pageant of horticultural excellence and spectacular entertainment"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/capital_culture/2004/04/garden_festival/index.shtml#
With over 60 designed gardens, pavilions, and a mini railway, it attracted over 3,380,000 visitors.
But sadly no provision was made for the future of the site beyond its time as a Garden Festival.
And as a result a chunk of it has become un-cherished and neglected for 22 years, a derelict site – a Brownfield once more.
Beyond the clearly obvious boundary fence of the derelict Garden Festival site – it is difficult to know what was or was not part of the original Garden Festival. The pub that was in the site is now outside of the site – and still a licensed and frequented premises.
On the opposite side of the road -
• A gravel-covered site – edged by weathered timber beams
• A parking area overlooking the Mersey
• And woodland behind the same type of chain-link fencing
• Luxury apartments – A part of the site that has been developed