Blurred Authorship
David Harding, 2010
It is one of those ‘areas of multiple deprivation’ in Glasgow and artists had been commissioned to make work there - part of a project to create two parks a mile apart. (1) Graham Fagen was one of the artists and foremost in his mind was how to avoid parachuting in and imposing his work on the place.
Lots of meetings and discussions; the place needed trees and flowers as all such places always seem to do. Plenty bits of road verges and bits of wasteland along the road from one park to the next so a conceptual linking of the parks became the framework. Planting trees in memory of local people who had died. More discussions and meetings and six sites selected with seventeen trees planted by local people. Not a lot of trees, in fact a risible number if one was trying to change the landscape, but loads of meaning in them. You can still see fresh flowers laid against some of them.
A hybrid tea rose only had the breeder’s catalogue number, JC 305 18/A. Fagen secured the right to name it and set in train a wide-ranging process of talks, leafleting and engagement with the local community. Eventually a poll decided the name and the Royston rose became, ‘Where The Heart Is’. Sentimental - yes but so what. This is the name by which the rose is now marketed. The rose bushes were planted in flowerbeds across Royston, Blackhill and Provanmill. They were given to all who had worked on the projects, became available for others and are sold commercially throughout the UK and elsewhere. The rose is a dark pink colour. It symbolises gratitude.
Conceptual artworks seem to have a greater potential to become, more readily, urban myths. There was widespread participation in these works and through that they entered the public realm. Stories were told and passed on. They became part of public discourse. They are visible - part of the local environment. Participation continues to take place in their use as memorials and their tending in gardens and public flowerbeds. Both the trees and the rose bushes became artworks only with participation of others.
The Royston rose may be unique - do you know of any other city neighbourhood that has a flower named after it? The name, ‘Where The Heart Is’, is forged into the gates to one of the parks. It has been copiously planted in a recent landscape development, halfway between the original parks. It has featured in Fagen’s exhibitions here and abroad and in catalogues, books and articles about his work. It is an ongoing work.
Trees and flowerbeds have a rough time in those places of, ‘multiple deprivation’ and this place is no different. While most of the original public flowerbeds have lost their roses they are still there in people’s gardens and in one or two other more protected sites. But, ten years on, both trees and roses have a mystery about them and myths have grown up around them. The ideas for them began with an artist responding to ‘the local’ as he found it. And wasn’t it Robert Hughes – the Robert Hughes - who recently said, ‘all great art is local’.
NOTE: (1) The Royston Road Project based in North East Glasgow commissioned the parks in 1999 and Lucy Byatt curated the involvement of the artists.
roystonroadproject.org
David Harding was the town artist in Glenrothes from 1968-78 where he developed the notion of the artist as a member of the planning team. He has created numerous social and public art works in Glenrothes and elsewhere in Scotland. He has presented many lectures in UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, etc on public and socio/political art, and art education - most recently at Toyota Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan, Tramway and CCA, Glasgow, The Yorkshire Artspace and Chelsea College of Art.He was the Senior Lecturer Art and Social Contexts at Dartington College of Arts from 1978- to 1985 and the Head of the Environmental Art in the School of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art from 1985 to 2001. He has recently made three films with Ross Birrell – in Spain, ‘Port Bou - 18 Fragments for Walter Benjamin’, first shown at the Kunsthalle Basel in Feb. 2006; In Mexico, ‘Journey in Search of Malcolm Lowry’, first shown at Kunsthalle Basel during Oct. 2006 and In Cuba, ‘Guantanamera’ 2009. He is currently artist in residence with Sam Ainsley and Sandy Moffat (AHM) at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios. He has written essays and book chapters including 'DECADEnt - Public Art: Contentious Term and Contested Practice’ a book co-edited with Pavel Buchler, Foulis Press (‘97) and' PRAKTIKA’, with Rosie Gibson and Claudia Zeiske, a book on a critical workshop on socially engaged art practice. Published by Deveron Arts, Huntly ‘08.