John has been commissioned by Longhouse to take part in a period of research to develop his own practice and explore new contexts of work through the Action Research programme.

For the action research I aim to undertake a survey of urban green spaces comprised of managed green areas and neglected or ‘vacant’ areas of land which have become unofficial green spaces. A key part of this site survey will include how people use or view these sites, this will be developed through a socially engaged approach that will facilitate a dialogue with local residents exploring possible and expanded definitions of what stewardship could be, and how they could adopt this as a proactive role in relation to green spaces.

The involvement of residents is critical to my proposed project. The research will be structured as a series of public ‘consultation’ sessions in green sites. The focus of this approach is too provide an informal venue where members of the public can work with myself on exploring how green sites are valued and used. Each event will consist of a freestanding 3m x3m x2m display where the public will be invited to engage in informal discussions. Throughout these discussions, notes will be made onto the display, which over successive sessions will become a cumulative public text exploring cogent questions of urban green spaces and how we can behave as responsible stewards of these valuable spaces.

The intention of this approach is to foreground how green spaces are seen and valued by members of different communities and to build a consensus about their value and possible future creative uses which would contribute to the life of the residents.

The online aspect of my research will be a cumulative map of the area which presents my research data. The map will include the locations of the sites, their approximate dimensions, botanical survey information listing the plants at each site, in the case of ‘neglected sites’ how long the site has been ‘out of use’, current uses of each site and possible future uses for sites developed in collaboration with residents. The map will also include highlights of the on site discussions.

This bursary will support me in building upon a new focus in my practise which began this year with scribble space, (commissioned by the Architecture Centre in Bristol and Groundwork Southwest). This project was a gallery installation with off-site guided walks, which questioned and expanded the debates and assumptions which inform how we understand and value urban green space.

This is an area that I wish to develop further within my practice. Previously my focus has been on the built urban environment and I have not specifically focused on green spaces before. Part of a vibrant urban landscape is its green areas, access to them and freedom of action within them is vitally important. This new focus in my practice is about developing practical approaches to maintaining and using them which does not preclude creative and imaginative uses of them.

This bursary will provide me with valuable time in which to develop, with the public a template for future projects in green spaces. My desire is to build a collaborative way of working which proactively explores how the public can act as responsible and imaginative stewards of green spaces.

Project update- September 2009

accumulations and removals

This is difficult to start……. there is the obvious one of the initial plan agreed at the onset of this period of research, but there are multiple points before this that would serve as beginnings. Perhaps I should outline what I mean by multiple beginnings or how this notion entered this project.

By chance something was returned to me in early September, a set of note books, sketches and ephemera from my practice between 1994 and 2000. This collection of words, drawings and plans marked out the spread of my practice, within which I worked from then onwards, in some form it was a set of instructions, a messy manual of assumptions and ideas I would spend the best part of ten years unpicking.

This pile was the remnants of billboard posters after they were removed. I found them in a small space below a series of billboards outside St. James Football Stadium.

I called this pile of discarded posters a grimoire . Why did this interest me within the context of this research project? To answer that I need to go back to my second visit to West Bromwich, on that day I walked the town and photographed a number of sites, one site particularly interested me, and it was an unused car park next to the metro line, behind the shopping centre. Whilst not appearing to be very green, it did have these green areas, where the top layer of tarmac had been removed and where piles of earth and rubble had been left after some construction/dismantling work.

These piles of material and surface removals echoed somehow with what I had been thinking when I first approached this project, but at that point I was unsure of what actually was going on. Following on from this I carried out a series of walks in Newcastle upon Tyne, looking for derelict sites that had ‘gone green’.

Over two weeks I found lots of sites which fitted what I was looking for and inside these sites I found more piles of material and areas where the top layer of the ground had been removed or excavated.

Project update – November 2009

preparing the ground

The first report concluded with references to alchemy, the writings of Robert Smithson, and a proposition to consider place as a form of matter, an unsupervised coagulation of processes, unregulated by deliberate or thought through actions. Since this report I have been organizing the series of public works, as proposed in my research plan.

As of tomorrow the 23rd of November I will begin to put my preliminary thoughts and research into action over two weeks in Bridgwater, Somerset. To enable this I am working with a number of organizations in Somerset, primarily the Engine Room, a film and video resource space set up by Somerset Film and Video and Thrive which is a network of arts organizations in the county which are providing technical support for the realization of small scale contemporary art projects.

For two weeks (Nov 23rd to Dec 6th) I will have the use of a vacant shop space, which I will use as a ‘collecting house’ for notes, observations, documentation and found objects collected from accidental green sites in Bridgwater. During these two weeks I will be visiting different green spaces both large and some very small, with members of the public and I will work with them on making in-situ texts, interventions and modifications to the sites. The purpose of this participatory and critical process is to develop a body of contextual material which will unpack the assumptions, expectations and perceptions surrounding accidental green sites. The results of this on site process will be drawn together in the shop unit, as a cumulative body of writing, drawing, photographs and video.

On the 28th and 29th of November I have invited three artists to work with me. The role of this intensive weekend is to develop a collaborative video piece which will explore and record possible uses of accidental green sites and the different social and economic reasons for their existence. The three artists are Nina Chua, Kirsten Forkert and Sophia Yadong Hao:

Nina Chua lives in Manchester, UK and spends a significant amount of time in Sabah, East Malaysia. Nina Chua has exhibited at, among others, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester; Laing Gallery, Newcastle; Blackburn Cathedral and Blackburn Pavilion in conjunction with Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery. Nina studied Embroidery at Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating in 2002. She is currently involved in a collaborative project, Mutually Advantageous Association.

Kirsten Forkert is involved in activism, art and research, particularly the difficult task of trying to allow these activities and contexts to cross over. She is currently doing a PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths and has written for Mute, Variant and Third Text. She lives in South London, where she studies and works, and is involved with the Lift and Hoist social centre.

Sophia Yadong Hao is a UK based artist who works with process and participation. Hao has exhibited works in the UK and internationally, including at Vital: International Live Art Festival (Manchester) in 2006 and 2007 and at the National Review of Live Art (Glasgow) 2009 and 2010. She was one of the collaborators of Ornamental Happiness, Rose English’s production commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial 2006. In 2008, Hao lived in a remote Chinese village and made an ongoing process based project I am not a Fairytale, an addendum to Chinese artist Ai Wei-wei’s work for documenta 12. As well as being an artist, Hao is a curator and writer. In 2009, she curated NOTES on a return which involved Anne Bean, Rose English, Mona Hatoum, Bruce McLean and Nigel Rolfe in revisiting and re-contextualizing Performance Art history in Britain in the 1980s.

01: Scribble space. The Architecture centre and Groundwork Southwest. Bristol 2009. Scribble space for the architecture centre in Bristol was a gallery installation supported by off-site guided walks, this process led approach questioned the rhetoric of green spaces by providing a venue in which to explore and expand the debates and assumptions which inform how we understand and value urban green space.

02: Full Bloom, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne 2008. This was commissioned to support the National Portrait Galleries touring exhibition ‘love’. The work was a 12 hour interactive installation in which the public were invited to write how emotions are expressed in public space. The work was a large timber frame covered in plastic sheeting on which were mounted 1000 fresh flowers. The flowers were used as a writing surface.

03: Public good. Out of site live art event, Dublin, Ireland 2007. This 3 day public work explored how behaviour is affected by site. The work consisted of a wreath made from artificial flowers and ribbons mounted on a steel frame. The wreath was located in Temple Bar Square, a popular tourist destination in central Dublin. During the work the public was invited to engage in discussions which explore forms of behaviour in public space and how these shifted depending on what is thought permissible. During the discussions notes were written onto the wreath providing a cumulative document of the process.

04: Lookout. Articule Gallery, Montreal Canada, 2003.

This gallery installation presented a static work which explored the rhetoric of public and civic spaces. The installation was supported by a gallery talk and panel discussion in which the role of the gallery as a public space was explored.

My research plan is largely staying intact at this stage; the only major change has been one of location for the proposed public works, which has moved from West Bromwich to Bridgwater. This is for a number of reasons; firstly it’s more practical for me to be developing this where I am now living (I moved from Newcastle to Somerset in October), secondly I wish to develop a relationship with venues and arts organizations in Somerset, as part of a longer term strategy to be professionally involved in the art sector in the county and I felt that this was a good opportunity to begin this.

After the two weeks in Bridgwater has come to a close I will submit a detailed report on what happened and its potential impact on the final stage of my research plan.