The Gerrard Winstanley Radical Gardening Space, Reclamation Mobile Field Centre
and Weather Station, (European Chapter). 2000
A custom made bike trailer that, when in transit, becomes a compact, weatherproof, lockable unit; roadworthy and user-friendly. It is designed to travel between allotments, parks, playgrounds, schools and squares, where it is parked, quickly assembled and made ready for action.
When stationary the trailer opens to reveal a small photocopier, a library of books available for photocopying and a small weather station. On top is a solar panel which harvests solar energy while the trailer is outside. (A full battery is enough energy to make one copy.)
The library consists of a unique collection of books on DIY culture, permaculture, urban gardening, alt/energy systems, utopias and issues of gentrification. The bike is named after Gerrard Winstanley, the leader and spokesperson for "the Diggers", a group of 17th Century indigent peasants who tried to defy the enclosure of common land by private interests: occupying it en masse, digging it up and cultivating it for food.
The bike trailer was commissioned by the Galerie für Landschafts Kunst, Hamburg, Germany and has traveled and been used in and around Hamburg where it is kept. The German artist Till Krause rode the bike from Hamburg to Wolfsburg in 2000.
Exhibited
The Art of the Garden: The Role of the Garden in British Visual Culture: 1804-2004,
Tate Britain, London, UK. 2004
WAYS OUT, Stroom, Den Haag, the Netherlands. 2002
democracy!, Royal College of Art, London, UK. 2000
Library foyer, the University of Lüneburg, Germany. 2000
The Cousins, Cosima von Bonin at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany. 2000
Debut of the Gerrard Winstanley Radical Gardening Space Reclamation Mobile Field Center and Weather Station (European Chapter), Galerie fur Landschafts Kunst, Hamburg, Germany. 2000