The View From the Road. 2015

Speedscaping. 2015. ArchiCAD drawing: Joseph Lythe

Speedscaping. 2015. Diorama Model. Installation View. Goldsmiths, University of London

Nick Ferguson. 2015. The Mobile Landscape. Production Image.

The View from the Road is a visual arts project that imagines roadside billboards as possible sites for public art. It takes as its focus billboards illegally positioned on agricultural land beside motorways in order to open up political histories of viewing the landscape at speed. At the same time, it explores the medium of the proposal as a way of going beyond the temporal and spatial limitations of a physical world shaped by the force of law. The artworks developed in the course of the project operate across the registers of photography, map making, modelling, drawing and text. They have been exhibited as follows

Online artwork, The Mobile Landscape, 2015. Stanley Picker Gallery.

Performance lecture, The Mobile Landscape. 2014,  Stanley Picker Gallery. Also at: ‘Across RCA: Beautiful and New: The Social Function of Sculpture and Architecture’, Royal College of Art, October 29, 2014. Information available here.

Online artwork,  Speedscaping, 2015, Future Architecture Platform

Book Chapter, Speedscaping, In: Macay, R (ed.). 2015. When Site Lost the Plot. Urbanomic

Visual arts exhibition, The View from the Road, 2014, Goldsmiths, University of London

Research Context

Within the visual arts, critical approaches to billboard landscapes is indebted to the pioneering work of pop art. In his provocatively titled book God’s Own Junkyard, Blake presents the US as an Eden transformed under unchecked capitalism, condemning the billboards as ‘scars’ and ‘pestering sores’ that blight the landscape (Blake, 1964: 125). Blake’s writing has assumed a concept of landscape in its art historical, Romantic sense: the pictorial. However, his prose is offset by rich illustrations that signal a more ambivalent relationship to the places he has visited. In this alternative presentation, landscape is taken to be a territory subjected to a mapping impulse of detailed, disinterested observation. Thus, Blake’s project drew attention to the presence of two rival concepts of landscape. It also positioned artistic enquiry into billboard landscapes as an instrument with which to investigate these concepts. It did not, however, significantly advance understanding of the relationship between these concepts or of how they relate to wider theories about the pictorial, observation and the politics of land.

Ruscha took the billboards that punctuate the rural and urban landscapes of southern California as material for his art. His treatment, one of cool reserve and devoid of judgement, was a way of playing out an artist’s persona that was gaining traction by the 1960s, as theorised by historian Moira Roth in her essay The Aesthetics of Indifference (1998.) Roth understood this persona as delivering a critique of the oppressive political regimes of the time and argued that it was played out in pop’s indifference to the subjects it investigated. Although not discussed by Roth, Ruscha’s billboards would also seem to exemplify the critique she identifies, signalling that this body of work belongs at the forefront of critical enquiry into the relationship between artistic vision, territory and liberal political thought.

Walker Evans. 1933-4 Billboard Painter

Peter Blake. 1964. Page from. Gods Own Junkyard

Ed Ruscha. 1976. Liquor Locker. From the series. Sunset Strip

Also widely explored in art and visual culture is the relationship between the road and the places through which it passes. In film the car windscreen has been imagined as a cinematic screen on which an ever-changing view is projected. In Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yukatan (1971) American land artist Robert Smithson used the car window provides a a framing device that, when moving at speed, affords a method of viewing landscape which subverts the landscape painter’s slow, privileged attention in which the land is orientated towards the subject’s acquisitive mind. In this way the fleeting landscape conditions a shallow, almost indifferent gaze. The reappraisal of the driver’s gaze finds further treatment in Michael Schwarzers Zoomscape where the author notes: ‘Driving encourages a nonchalant way of looking.’ (2004: 72). If, as I have argued elsewhere, artistic attention has beginnings in the aristocratic affectation known as ‘nonchalance’, then the billboards that line the highway provide an opportunity to test the possibilities of dromoscopy as a fitting mode of attention for the art researcher.

The Artworks

Speedscaping

Speedscaping is a proposal for a public artwork. A decommissioned lorry trailer, one of the many already parked in fields by the sides of UK motorways, is hired for the duration of the exhibition. One side of the trailer, usually used for the purposes of advertising, is printed in imitation of the background landscape in the tradition of the trompe l’oeil. The trailer is initially seen ahead, in the distance. As the spectator nears, it is seen to the left of centre vision and the printed surface draws attention to the experience of parallax with the landscape behind. The trompe l’oeil effect, whereby features on the printed surface line up precisely with their counterparts in the background, takes place only as the trailer is in peripheral vision, and just before it passes out of view.

Speedscaping may be sited beside any road that is rural, busy and fast, and where motorists are not permitted to stop. The conditions are only that it is positioned so that it forms part of the view ahead in order that the forms of looking made possible by stopping, slowing down or getting out of the vehicle are not practical.

Speedscaping Exhibit #1. Dorama

Diorama is a 1: 75 scale model of a section of verge on the M40 motorway at between Junction 2 and 3 Westbound. By putting an eye up to the model you are able to line up the landscape printed on the trailer with that in the background. This will give you the experience of the trailer merging into the landscape.

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model. 1.6m x 1.2m x 1.3m Mixed Media. 2014.

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model. Mixed Media. 2014..

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model. Mixed Media. 2014.

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model installation view. Mixed Media. 2014, Goldsmiths, London

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model. Mixed Media. 2014.

Nick Ferguson. Speedscaping. Diorama Model. Mixed Media. 2014.

Speedscaping. 2015. Projection geometry indicating distortion of view when seen on side of trailer (H)

Speedscaping. 2014. Presentation artefact #3. Anamorphically adjusted photograph. To be printed on billboard 15m x 3.5m

Speedscaping. 2015. Presentation artefact #4. Digital print on blue-backed billboard paper.Installation at Goldsmiths, University of London

Speedscaping. Exhibit #3: Digital Drivethrough

Digital Drivethrough is a video that simulates the experience of driving past the hoarding; a still frame print showing the moment of ‘trompe l’oeil’; an installation view of the work. Animated ArchiCAD drawing. Duration:  21 seconds. Drawings. Joseph Lythe

The Mobile Landscape

The Mobile Landscape is a slideshow with a documentary-style narrative that describes Ferguson’s journeys around the highways of England. In search of a site for a public art project, the artist takes the viewer along rural stretches of the motorway to inspect a series of roadside advertising hoardings in the South East. They are the type mounted on obsolete transport infrastructure and which are strategically positioned on agricultural land. As the hoardings are surveyed for their potential, there emerges a political history of the view from the road: of a countryside sculpted by the comings and goings of capital; of rural aspirations and anxieties; of clandestine livelihoods sustained by proximity to the road.

Duration:  30 minutes. This work was performed at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, in 2015. An earlier version was performed at: ‘Across RCA: Beautiful and New: The Social Function of Sculpture and Architecture’, Royal College of Art, October 29, 2014.

To listen to an online version of the work click here:

http://www.stanleypickergallery.org/online-works/nick-ferguson-the-mobile-landscape-3/

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Nick Ferguson 2014. The Mobile Landscape.  Powerpoint presentation.  48 slides. Duration: 30 minutes.

Workings: Maps, drawings, photos, models

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Nick Ferguson. 2014. Billboard with landscape. Pencil on paper.

Nick Ferguson. 2014. Billboard with landscape 2. Pencil on paper.

Nick Ferguson. 2014. Billboard with landscape 3. Pencil on paper.

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Nick Ferguson and Richard Beard. 2013. Billboard with landscape. Mixed media

Location map. ArchiCAD drawing: Joseph Lythe

Elevation. ArchiCAD drawing: Joseph Lythe

Still. ArchiCAD drawing: Joseph Lythe

Billboard artwork prior to anamorphic adjustment.

Projection diagram showing anamorphic adjustment required for the image needed to look normal when viewed from the road.

Billboard artwork following anamorphic adjustment

Billboard test strips. Digital print on blue back billboard paper

Billboard fragment. 1.8m x 1.2m. Digital print on blue back billboard paper

Diorama (detail). Location. Fulmer House Farm. M40 westbound. Scale 1:150

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

Nick Ferguson. 2013. Logo. M25 J14.

References and Further Reading

Alpes, S. 2005. The Vexations of Art. Velazquez and Others. Newhaven and London, Yale University Press.

Appleyard, D. Lynch. K and Myer J. 1964. The View From the Road. Cambridge Mass.

Ballard, J. 2014. Concrete Island. Fourth Estate.

Blake. P. 1964. God’s Own Junkyard. Henry Holt & Co.

Borden, I. 2013. Drive. Journeys Through Film, Cities and Landscapes. Reaktion Books.

Brenner, N. 2016.The Hinterland Urbanised. AD / Architectural Design, July/August, 2016, 118-127. Available at: http://www.urbantheorylab.net/publications/the-hinterland-urbanized/

Copely. S. 2010. The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape, and Aesthetics Since 1770. Cambridge University Press

Cosgrove. D. 2012. Geography and Vision. I B Tauris

Grabner, M and Killam B. (n.d) The Poor Farm. Available at: http://poorfarmexperiment.org/about/

Gray, E. 2005. Don Juan and the Poetics of Tourism. In: Poetry and Indifference. From the Romantics to the Rubáiyát. Amhurst and Boston: University of Massacusetts Press

Jacobsen. K, Leming. W. 2013. American Road. [DVD] Cold Chicago Productions.

Lowe, R. 1996. Letter to an Unknown Person. Available at: http://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/exhibitions/exhibition/landscape-2000/object/a-letter-to-an-unknown-person-no-5-lowe-1996-p7171

Merriman, P. 2007. Driving Spaces. A Cultural-historical Geography of England’s M1 Motorway. Wiley-Blackwell.  

Mitchell. W. 2002. Landscape and Power. University of Chicago Press.

Petit, C and Sinclair, I. 2002. London Orbital. DVD.

Roth. M. The Aesthetics of Indifference. In: Roth. M. 1998 Difference/Indifference. Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture. Routledge

Ruscha. E. 1966. Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Los Angeles. Self Published.

Schwarzer. M. 2004. Zoomscape. Architecture in Motion and Media. Princetown Architectural Press

UK Gov. 2004. Parliamentary Business Publications and Records. Available at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldhansrd/vo041215/text/41215-03.htm

UK Gov. 2010. Roads: Illegal Motorway Advertising. Available at: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2010-07-21a.967.5

Vertov. D. 1929. Man With a Movie Camera. DVD

Virilio, P. 1998. ‘Dromoscopy, or the Ecstasy of Enormity’. Trans. Edward O’Neill. Wide Angle 20.3 (1998) 11-22