Extract : ” …. Alan Lodge’s photographs (pp.28-30.144,147) at Stonehenge capture that pre-rave, free festival pilgrimage. They are as important to me as Homer Sykes photographs; he was so clearly part of this movement rather than a photo journalist reporting on it. Stonehenge has been a pilgrimage destination for thousands of years. The structure remains the same; the people making that quest have just changed.
” The new old ways ….
“MOST PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN CITIES OR TOWNS HAVE LOST THAT CONNECTION TO THE MAGIC OF RURAL LANDSCAPE.”
About yourself or your country and humanity, you can project them onto these structures – Stonehenge especially. People can take whatever they want from them, because we’ll never know the true meaning of them and so there’s a huge spectrum of interpretation. It’s something that represents our national identity and yet is absolutely a mystery, which is good. For me Stonehenge is the most contemporary structure in Britain, because every week, there seems to be a new story about it. Stonehenge is about what’s happening now, in a way that archaeology is not about the past as much as it’s about the present and future; it’s about how we see ourselves now and the stories about Stonehenge are limitless. Jumping forward in time, can we talk about how the rural still can have a ludic and communal function with things like rave culture? Communities can congregate in once place and form identity in some sense in the land.
JEREMY If only for 24 hours. I think one interesting aspect of early rave culture is that it redrew the map for a lot of people and their relationship to the countryside. Instead of going into city centres to nightclubs or parties, young people would get in a car and go on a journey, a quest into the countryside and found themselves in a place they’ve never been to before. The quest part of it was a really interesting- you might see the lights on the horizon and follow it, it’s potentially a very mythic journey in a sense. The stories of trying to find these raves or not finding them or being prevented from finding them is possibly as exciting as the party itself. Most people who live in cities or towns have lost that connection to the magic of rural landscape. I have no idea what to do when I get into the countryside. I don’t know where I’m allowed to go; what is and isn’t allowed. I feel a bit lost and much safer when in a city. For people to gather in rural places they’ve never been to before, that’s quite a statement, regardless of the ancient arcane laws around land in the UK.
Alan Lodge’s photographs (pp.28-30.144,147) at Stonehenge capture that pre-rave, free festival pilgrimage. They are as important to me as Homer Sykes photographs; he was so clearly part of this movement rather than a photo journalist reporting on it. Stonehenge has been a pilgrimage destination for thousands of years. The structure remains the same; the people making that quest have just changed.
ALEX Covid has encouraged people back outside, to connect with the landscape. We always get up at dawn on May Day and in 2021 we joined Martin Green, a musician who was making a radio programme about rave and Morris Dancing. It was a dazzling morning and there were some ravers there. They were seeing in the dawn and we were all inhabiting the same space but coming at it from different angles and it was really special. We’d adapted some of our yearly rituals to take place up on the common near Stroud and we noticed more and more school kids just hanging out and it feels that there is a movement back to the land or away from the inner city. People are reclaiming their right to inhabit the rural common spaces in different ways. JEREMY DELLER & BOSS MORRIS
Radical Landscapes | Trailer | Tate
Radical Landscapes Exhibition, Tate Liverpool
Reviews:
Two reviews in the Guardian … this one is kinder to the show:
“…. The trespasses are represented in the show by 1930s press photographs. Images from half a century later, taken by Alan Lodge, of the confrontation now known as the Battle of the Beanfield between a convoy of new-age travellers heading to the 1985 Stonehenge free festival and the police, illustrate how the story continues.
The notional focus of the Battle of the Beanfield, Stonehenge, reverberates around the exhibition with artists – Ravilious, Henry Moore, Tacita Dean and others – drawn to symbolically powerful aspects of landscape from henges and geoglyphs to ancient oak trees.”
Nukes in the brooks: the artists who weaponised landscape art. Guardian Thursday 5th May 2022
This Guardian reviewer didn’t like the show .. but liked my bit, well yes, of course …!
“…. Alan Lodge shows slides and videos of free festivals in the late 80s including at Stonehenge; the soundtrack had me wanting to shuffle along with these happy idiot savants in a field. And that’s what this entire show could have been like: joyous, life-enhancing and therefore truly radical. ….”
Radical Landscapes review – ‘Is loving green fields really wicked?’ Guardian Friday 6th May
