Grange Arch Screening
Exhibition // Installation by Joshua Brooks and Charlie Usher
“To pursue the theme of lonely places. There seems to me no stranger spot than the surroundings of certain ‘follies’. The drawing reproduced here represents Bond’s Folly, which stands on the hills above Creech Grange, near Wareham in Dorset. It is a true folly in that it emphasises, in every feature, its absolute uselessness. Imagine, the heights above Edgon Heath, a wan architectural exercise vaguely reminiscent of the Marble Arch. The stranger who passes on the adjacent road conceives it to be the gateway through which a private drive passes over the hills down into the woods and plantations of the Grange. But no road flows beneath the solid castellated arch. Immediately beyond the crown of the hill the ground descends steeply into a dense coppice of oaks. All around the Folly the grass grows in coarse tufts among the close turf. The bracken is flattened by the wind, the rabbits tunnel endlessly in the undergrowth of brambles and furze. It is a lost place, eternally put out of countenance by an inexplicable intrusion upon its wild privacy.”
(Nash. P, Pg 230)
This extract from Paul Nash’s essay ‘Swanage or Seaside Surrealism’ was the main inspiration for the first visit that Charlie, the Director of ‘Ascending Ballard Down, took to Bond’s Folly in March 2018 and the experience and imagery obtained on his trip consequently led to the making of Ascending Ballard Down. Upon revisiting the site, and with the above text in mind, Nash’s comments on the monument as being “a lost place” and one of “absolute uselessness” were particularly notable to us. Guided by Nash’s writing, we had ourselves discovered this “lost place,” and numerous questions seemed to arise; How can a place be ‘lost’? And how is it then ‘found’?
The idea to re-purpose this otherwise “useless” arch came to fruition, and the concept of framing the film within the arch seemed the most appropriate answer. By physically placing our project within the timeline of Nash, our record of the film screened at this site would be using the temporarily of the event recorded as document to play with Nash’s idea of it as being one “eternally put out of countenance,” thus creating a new monument; an archival addition to the eternal landscape.
Scale technical drawings of the proposed screen design by Joshua Brooks
Scale SketchUp model of the proposed screen design by Joshua Brooks
Event poster by Charlie Usher