Bluewater Car Park crime scene - Limited Edition 2 of 10 Photograph

Photography: Digital, Color and Photo on Paper. This work is printed on PermaJet Museum paper [310gsm] using pigment archival inks, signed and numbered. It comes in a museum quality frame. In 2011 I visited Bluewater shopping centre [that lies off the M25 in Kent. England]. I went to find its ‘Reflection Space - a place for quiet away from stress, hustle and bustle - a place to recharge your inner spirit.’ I was curious about how it might have been designed, doubting its claim to offer some spiritual nourishment in such a retail environment. I found it eventually, tucked away. It was a rather melancholic, confined room with the bible and koran on shelf spaces. Prints of autumn leaves on pools of water were hanging on the wall. Dispirited, I left the vast retail complex only to be confronted by a piece of unintended street theatre which inspired this body of work. An obese man nonchalantly walked past me pushing a shopping trolley full of Marks & Spencer packaged dinners, heading for the car park. Suddenly from behind him came a shout from a security guard. The man ran off, abandoning the trolley, with several guards in hot pursuit. Seconds later there was the sound of a police car siren, as if awaiting these possibly regular incidents. Eventually the man was arrested on a bridge, and captured on the one photograph that I took on this trip. In this Ballardian non-place - a site of commerce and consumption, the opposite of a neighbourhood with identity and history [see Marc Auge’s book Non-Places]- I allowed my imagination to run away with the idea that we may have all been forced to consider becoming shoplifters [or looters] if the recent banking crisis had meant that we couldn’t withdraw funds from cash dispensers. So the series progresses rapidly from scenes of contented consumers in the car park, escalating into dramatic accidents, antisocial behaviour, road rage, prostitution, dogging, crime scenes and rioting! This narrative mischief-making plays with the leftist snobbery that exists against places like Bluewater. When writing about my previous series The Office Park, Mark Dery quoted from fellow cultural critic Rick Poynor's essay Inside the Blue Whale (from Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World): "I came to Bluewater expecting to despise it. What I discovered is that while you can hate the idea of Bluewater it's harder to hate the experience itself... it was kind to the senses, unexpectedly relaxing... Maybe that’s its cleverness: it lulls and anaesthetises.” On my one and only trip there I have a further memory - of seeing an exhibition of little models of proposed public art sculptures one of which was a white horse.

Photography:Color on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:1

Size:16.3 W x 11 H x 0.1 D in

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