Simon English
England Revisited
Summer 1971: Simon English visited 75 points across the country to write the word 'ENGLAND' on England.
Summer 2010: Simon English makes a new artwork by revisiting those points.
Summer 1971: Simon English visited 75 points across the country to write the word 'ENGLAND' on England.
Summer 2010: Simon English makes a new artwork by revisiting those points.
For the national arts programme The Re-Enchantment, London based production agency artevents has commissioned artist Simon English to revisit 75 points that he first encountered in the making of his monumental All England Sculpture of 1971.
From July until September 2010 Simon revisits hedgerows and roadsides, flyovers and forests, fields and fallow terrain, cities, town and hamlets. During his journey Simon will catalyse another generation of encounters between people and place and between artist and landscape. He will photograph 40 years of history as inscribed in the English landscape.
At regular intervals Simon will upload current images of the points revisited to compare with images taken in 1971. You may also view Simon’s video diary by which he makes observations about the differing landscapes, communities, ecologies and industries of the 1970’s and those of this millennium.
The boundaries made by the English hedgerow may be dissolved and a field may now be a car park. The advent of Dutch elm disease, the demise of mining, new telecommunication apparatus, crop modification, physical regeneration, climate change, farm diversification and shifting parameters of the urban, the semi-urban, the semi-rural and the rural have occurred. What was once the edge may have been moved to the centre and where had been central may now be between. Communities and farms have diversified, people have passed and populations have shifted. Species have invaded and yet, in some places, the vista will remain unchanged – trees near, trees nearby and trees forever.
England Revisited will exploit the technological opportunities of the present to re-visit the past and re-enchant the leylines of a journey first made almost 40 years ago. In 1971 Simon used map pins, stills and photographic slide film, photocopiers, maps and handwritten correspondence.
In 2010 Simon will use GPS tagging and virtual cartography to once more write the word England down the length of the actual country.
England Revisited is a new art work about change.