(pvc, steel wire, photographs, wood)
Event: 12th July, 7 pm – 9 pm, here
Fake Plastic Trees is an immersive experience for everyone to enjoy. Adults and children alike will be encouraged to walk through the forest of happy memories. There will be a programme of acoustic entertainment to accompany the experience – with local aritsts and poets curated by Jonathan Taylor of Scribal Gathering. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own refreshments and to linger and enjoy the evening.
This piece is made up of a forest of plastic garlands in an underpass, each imbued with pictures of people’s happy memories in Milton Keynes, as well as images of Milton Keynes itself in days gone by, and the life and times of the tragic Midsummer Oak*. In the centre, like a saint’s relic, is a tiny chip from the Oak itself.
Milton Keynes is a special place. Built with beautiful ideals, and designed with thought, care, heart, and intellect. It’s a place to feel strongly about. This piece celebrates Milton Keynes and what makes it. A place comprises people and environment. I feel that somehow the memories that are created in a place become woven into the fabric of that place. They become the roots we put down. I wanted to create a piece where people could get lost in a magical forest of Milton Keynes memories. I wanted this to be in an underpass, as they are classic and beautiful examples of Milton Keynes infrastructure. Also, I find them to be places of almost mystical significance – sunken below ground-level, where ways cross. I love the beauty of modern materials like concrete, and wanted to mirror this with the beauty of my PVC trees; in contrast, say, to the fake grass which now occupies the former place of the Midsummer Oak.
As well as celebrating Milton Keynes, this piece also comments on how the beautiful architectural ideals of a city for living in have been betrayed by successive councils and planning departments. Nothing typifies that more than the building of the new shopping centre, right across Midsummer Boulevard**, and around the beloved ancient Oak, which long pre-dated the city. I think the death of this magnificent tree, and its replacement with fake grass, represents the betrayal of Milton Keynes in the name of naked commercial greed. For me, the Oak itself has become the martyr and saint of Milton Keynes (May She Rest In Peace). The wood chunk is all that has been salvaged from her, and it lies, like a medieval saint’s relic, in the centre of this beautiful plastic mausoleam.