Where is the allotment gardener of Nowhere in particular? I need his horticultural propensities and capabilities. He may be on a pestilential bender, inhabiting the consciousnesses of all manner of pestiferous fungi, bacteria, and minibeasts. Blossom Wilt? Blame the allotment gardener of Nowhere in particular! This is only conjecture. He may be elsewhere, inhabiting the mind of something much less malign and destructive. But what is malign about Blossom Wilt anyway? Where does that thought come from? What is not creative about the destruction he is cultivating in my mind? That imagined encounter took place in Nowhere in particular, for precisely, specifically, where the gardener is, I can't imagine. He is Nowhere but one step ahead in the furtive imagination of a garden.
Perhaps he is a cat stuck in someone's shed? This thought occurred to me as I stumbled upon, Shack Stack, in the swanky environs of Grosvenor Waterside, Chelsea. I didn't want to hang around or loiter too long in the smart surroundings of that very affluent estate; I felt sure the miasma of my plebeian, 'hoi polloi-on' condition was bound to offend the sense of security of the place. But linger I did, and just long enough to detect a faint scratching and hollow meowing. Could this be the allotment gardener trapped inside a Richard Wilson sculpture? I put my ear to the sculpture and listened intently. Yes, there was no doubt I was imagining a gardener who was horribly incarcerated in the cool dark interior. I was aware of cctv and wary of the possible perception that I was acting a little strangely, there in SW wherever. When I tried to take my head off the stack of shacks I found it was stuck, held by some sort of gravitational force; the force of where one belongs perhaps. A super sub-human effort, beyond the realm of ordinary imagination, was required to extricate my self from the sculpture. Oh, and I should say I didn't actually know it was a Richard Wilson sculpture at the time of my attachment to it.
I decided to go to security/reception and make inquiries; one, to find out the name and creator of the art, and, two, to ascertain if it was at all possible a gardener (my imaginary fellow) had gotten trapped inside the sculpture at the time of the installation. The sculpture might even be a psycho-sound sculpture, I thought, as I entered the security office gingerly. The security man did not know much about the sculpture other than it was there and had been so for a long time. I decided to abandon all hope of liberating a trapped allotment gardener of Nowhere in particular. I asked, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, if, by any chance, the penthouse shack was for sale and affordable. 'I think, sir, you will have to ask at reception about that', he answered, with a look of slowly arousing suspicion.
I pushed my luck and extended my relatively brief residency (or inhabitation of, or occupation of?) in the estate, by following the advice of the security receptionist and making my way to the grander and altogether cavernous space of the main reception. The origins of the stack of shacks were not known to the duty receptionist there either. 'If you don't mind waiting, my colleague will be able to help you, sir'. We waited for the colleague to appear. I began to feel a little nervous about the receptionist and what he was doing behind the desk. What did he mean by, 'help'? Having established I had no proletarian (even) business being on the site I feared his colleague would be none other than a security guard intent on my assisted removal from this Shangri-la. I scratched my head and the receptionist winced and started tapping his fingers on the desk; a sure sign I had outstayed his professional welcome. I left, thoroughly disturbed by the incongruity of the shacks stacked there in the uber waterside plaza. I had to dismiss the thought of a gardener wretchedly trapped in that totem construction situated within the surreal estates of Hirst, Hepworth, Moore, and Wentworth.
I made my way along Chelsea Bridge Road by the building site for the Chelsea Flower Show, an oasis, a horticultural mirage, already 'sold out' a banner declared. I tried to explain to my self the nature of my disturbance by the stack of shacks. I found a large and weighty tome, situated on a coffee table - where would or could I be? 'Shed - the art of the shed'? I don't know if this compilation exists. I found, by recall, 'Cold Dark Matter' (Cornelia Parker) and 'Shedboatshed' (Simon Starling) - drifting in my store of similarly themed artworks. They conflated and combined into a super shed work, the complexities of which occupied me all the way from Chelsea to Chingford via a particular location close to the North Circular where there is a small shanty encampment partially concealed by a dense roadside thicket and copse. The shacks aren't stacked there.
Three Mills - Bow Lock, 13th May 2014
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