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  volcanic landscape
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  the pedal powered illumination
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  black yurt in landscape

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“Anna Best’s one-year Artlands commission is realised in tandem with the development and opening of Cyclopark – a new 43 hectare multisport centre situated in Gravesend. The time-based commission explores a mutable set of ideas and images including the site, entertainment and leisure; rallies and protest; tattoos and subcultures and sees the gathering of multiple stories in order to create a new narrative, which will manifest live through performances and interventions and ultimately a film/publication/on-line game.

Bearpits and Landmines opened with a performance in April with the striking and confrontational Ring of Fire by James Bentley at the Cyclopark site, with the A2 motorway as a backdrop and was accompanied by a screening of Werner Herzog’s “Lessons of Darkness” – powered entirely by bicycles.

Bearpit Saturdays followed throughout July and August with a five-week residency at the St. Georges Shopping Centre, Gravesend where a programme of workshops and activities were developed and delivered with local residents. The programme included the creation of a fleet of distinctly uncorporate bikes, a bike amnesty, bike blinging, a cycle cinema event with a screening of Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thieves” and a vintage Warner Bros. cartoon “The Bear That Wasn’t”. The project culminated in a mass ride to the Cyclopark site. The Bearpit Saturdays  programme provided an important meeting point between artist and team and local residents and a rich platform for socio-cultural research, which will be used to inform a further programme of events and happenings.”

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I have been working on this project since January this year. In April I invited James Bentley to perform his “ring of fire” on the site of the Cyclopark earth works. It is right next to the A2 motorway traffic roaring between Dover and London.  We invited Magnificent Revolution to enable us to pedal power the Herzog film “Lessons of Darkness” in a silver airstream caravan called the Cultural Baton. It was hard work cycling just 4 bikes. Luckily we were joined by a slight gang of lads who helped. The wind blew.

Fast forward a couple of months and we are running Bearpits Saturdays in an empty shop in Gravesend’s St George’s Shopping Centre. This was organised by Chris Yates and Fiona Boundy and it was a huge success. Hundreds of people came into the project over a few weeks. We had a petition and got more than 150 signatures for a traffic free path from the town centre to the new Cyclopark. Please sign the online version.

I am working now on what I call the sub plot, a series of unnannounced events in various public places, roads and paths… I am exploring the myth of Ulysses and the Cyclops, gigantic-ness, monstrosity, through conglomerate figures, half human half machine, the internal combustion engine. I am thinking about regeneration, development, and conversely about collapse and destruction….. tbc

The yurt is almost finished! well actually it’s 2, one white a kind of foyer or reception and the amazing completely dark space of the cinema yurt. The sun shines through pinpricks in the black canvas but we did a test run and the film looks great. We watched a looney tunes cartoon about explosions.

 

Artlands North Kent Commission for the Cyclopark, A2 corridor at Gravesend

Dates – Jan 11 till May 12

Curator – Fiona Boundy

Project Manager – Chris Yates

A notion to give instructions in a conceptual manner – which would have been good but hasn’t really happened – has become  more like a team that has sort of grown beside the work, both remote in Kent, by the work of Chris Yates in Bearpit Saturdays mainly, and including Steve Davies, airbrush artist and stock car painter in Gravesend, and locally to me with several amazingly talented people in Dorset – Spike Golding for his ongoing collaboration over the imagery and graphic design for the project, Mike Jessop for the ingenious and inventive blackout yurt, Darren Crane for ongoing advice and proper fairground illumination, Sophie Sharp for the cyclops drawing, Sam Wood at Mikkimugs for screenprinting resources…

I would also like to thank

Stephen Turner and Julie for accomodation, Laurence Tricker, Kent Cultural Baton and Nicole, James Bentley for the ring of fire, Magnificent Revolution for inspiration and cycle power, Allpark welders, Stefan Hintsches of kinetic interventions in Bristol for inventive and inclusive practice which helped make Bearpits Saturdays such a massive success, Kelvin Pawsey, Jay, Alfie and co. for bike fleet work, the Bearpits Bunch  – Andrew, Maisie and Fay, Dave Fish, Kate, Charlie, Kate, and everyone who made a bike or trailer, donators to the bike Amnesty and bikers on the Ride, those (150 odd ) people who signed the petition, , Simon Keep for the sheep’s fleece accordion playing, Jonny Hoskins for cyclops stiltwalking, Lina Jungergard for momentous motorway fire breathing and Gary Wells for puffs of smoke in the wilderness

and

… TBC