CHRIS DOBROWOLSKI
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      • Seascape Escape (No.1)
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      • Timescape Escape
      • Landscape Escape (No.2) >
        • Sketches for Tank
      • Skyscape Escape
      • Essay/ Catalogue >
        • Introduction
        • Seascape Escape
        • Landscape Escape No. 1
        • Seascape Escape No.2
        • Landscape Escape No.2
        • Skyscape Escape
        • Timescape Escape
        • End-Piece
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      • How We Won The War
      • "Stop me and buy one!"
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      • Camera Crash
      • "Untitled" hanging itself
      • Buy My Fucking Painting!
      • Absolut Ship !
      • Executive Toy!
      • Art Stunt Suicide Disaster
      • Roll up, Roll up. Get your Art here!
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      • It's for you
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      • Tank Caravans Paint Brush
      • Buy to Let
      • Section 21
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      • Project outline
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      • Project Outline
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      • Project Outline
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      • Project Outline
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      • 'EK52 UDP'
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      • Project Outline
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      • Red Sports Car, East To West
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      • Matchbox
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    • Badgast Residency >
      • Short Essay
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      • Fish
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Landscpe Escape (No.2)

Picture
'LAT', Odapark, Venray, Holland. 2005. (For info on the associated publication, click here). Photo-Eric Van Straaten-
The bodywork for Landscape Escape No.2 is made from John Constable reproductions (eg. the Haywain, Dedham Lock and mill, Flatford mill etc.) All the pictures were bought from car boot sales in the North Essex/Suffolk border area where I lived and worked. This countryside is sometimes known as ‘Constable Country’. Like most car boot sales in this area they are held in farmer’s fields. Consequently all of these pictures were actually bought in the rural landscape. Before this, they had presumably at some point hung in people’s homes.
Picture
Detail- Close up showing 'Willy Lott's cottage' from the 'Haywain' Photo: Sue Guthrie
​The tank’s chassis is built from a variety of garden implements. The frame is made out of wheelbarrows and lawnmowers and the gun is a 'garden flame gun' used for killing weeds. The driver’s seat is a deck chair and the petrol tank is made from a watering can. Two brooms brush the inside of the tracks clean to stop them from clogging. The motive power comes from four 'Suffolk Punch' Lawnmower engines. Made in Suffolk, they also come from ‘Constable Country’.
The pictures were printed during the 1960’s through to the 1980’s, each one was produced unglazed and mounted with glue onto a sheet of hardboard that was then framed. The frames have been removed and used here on the inside of the tank to hold each panel together and line the interior.

The tank has not been built and then ‘covered’ in pictures it has been ‘made from’ pictures. The picture frames can also be seen on the outside surrounding the gun/vision slits. Normally we look into the area defined by a picture frame into the artificial landscape of a painting, here the driver climbs into the painting and in effect looks through the picture frame out onto the real world.
Picture
Power from four 'Suffolk Punch' lawnmowers.
Picture
Interior- The picture frames are used on the inside and hold the pictures together. The green garden hose and funnel is a speaking tube to allow communication between the two occupants.
(Film 5 mins 23 secs.) Camera- Eddie Weldon, Mark Colyer and Chris. This film plays on the TV screen under the tank in the gallery.
Picture
The Auxiliary. Middlesbrough Art Weekender , 2019'
Photo Miki Rogers
​In the gallery the tank is displayed on top of a TV monitor playing a film of the tank driving over a television playing a video of the tank. At a given time during a private view the tank is taken off of the TV monitor, the engines are started and I attempt to drive over the TV and crush it.

Process has always been the most important part of the work for me. Part of this process is the use of the work outside in the landscape. I have always found it difficult to bring this into the art gallery without resorting to using a film as documentation. In some ways I despise the video as it symbolises that the important moment of the work has past and it is only the remnants that enter the gallery.  My friend, Arjen Boerstra, once called this “The reality problem”.

My mother still has a Constable print in the house where I grew up; a semi detached on a council housing estate- arguably the target market for this type of interior decoration. I always feel that the patchwork camouflage of my homemade tank, made from nostalgic images of rural idylls; resonates interestingly with the patchwork of gardens behind everyone’s house on the estate. I see each garden as a small allotted segment of landscape, somehow trying to imitate the countryside and the romantic image of rural solitude.
Picture
Willy Lott's cottage. Flatford Mill. Essex/Suffolk border, Constable country.
Picture
Filming running over a TV playing a video of the tank.
Picture
Attempting to crush the TV at the private view. There aren't many galleries that will allow this indoors, 'Oda Park', Venray, Holland- was an exception. The TV didn't break and was actually running better after the tank got stuck on top of it. Consequently it was left on top of this TV for the duration of the show. Photo: Eric van straaten
Picture
The show 'Model Village' (London, 2004) was in an old shoe factory that was due for demolition. Consequently it was ok to drive the tank around in it. At the private view I successfully destroyed a bright red, 1970's portable television. In this photo I have a rubber car mat stitched to the seat of my boiler suit. I'm also wearing marigold gloves and wellington boots in case of electrocution. Photo: Jo Newman
Camera- Gemma Tierney, Karina Smigla Bobinski, Kyp Kyprianou. The Auxiliary. Middlesbrough Art Weekender , 2019'
​Also shown in 'Model Village', London N1-2004 , 'Young Masters' London, EC1-2005. Guardian (23/06/05) 

Other publications:  'The Uses of an Artist'-1998, 'This Flat Earth'-2000, 'De Strip'-2002 - 'Baudrillard Now'-2009 and MAW (Middlesbrough Art Weekender) 2019. 

TV: The tank was the subject of a three minute television short on 'The Slot' (Channel 4). Filmed and edited by Dan Saul (2001). Some of Dan's footage also features in this 9 minute item on the 'BBC's Culture show' about a contemporary 'Contstable country' controversy in 2006 (The tank features 7.50 minutes into the item).

​(See also 'The Cornfield- Free Gift Inside' a Constable related work on this website ).

​Stour Surrounding - Artists and the Valley

A documentary film that takes a look at artists both past and present who have responded to the landscape of the Stour Valley. 
The film has been produced by artist Jevan Watkins Jones with Offshoot Films.
(44mins. 53 secs) Landscape Escape No. 2 features at
5mins, 25secs ,   42 mins. and end credit sequence. 

For 'Sketches for Tank' click on this image below
Sketches for Tank
  • Home
  • in the art gallery
    • Transit Transition >
      • Train Wave
      • The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
      • Self Evaluation
      • something About Global Capitalism But Less Ernest
      • The Man From Human Resources Is Coming to See You
      • The Ofsted Inspection
      • The Risk Assessment
      • Personal development training day
      • My Matchbox Toy Lorry
      • The Zero Hours Contract
      • The Plinth
    • Remnants Of Utopia >
      • Austerity Miniature Mayday Parade
      • The Contract
      • Agitprop/anti-agitprop Train
      • Siberia
      • How We Won The War
      • Revolutionary Reminder
      • The Marketing Team
    • Antarctica >
      • Project Outline
      • Antarctica Essay
      • Reviews
      • Sledge
      • Toy Sledge
      • Airfix Antarctic Aeroplane Hoover
      • Eating Penguins
      • The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
      • Toy Snowmobile
      • Rat Box, Bird Island
      • Rejection Letters
      • The Last Roll Of Kodachrome In The World
      • John Deere Gator And Specimen
      • There Are No More Dogs In Antarctica
      • Furthest South- J C B
      • Captain Scotts Bookshelf
      • Antarctic Toy Portraits
    • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape >
      • Seascape Escape (No.1)
      • Landscape Escape (No.1)
      • Seascape Escape (No.2)
      • Timescape Escape
      • Landscape Escape (No.2) >
        • Sketches for Tank
      • Skyscape Escape
      • Essay/ Catalogue >
        • Introduction
        • Seascape Escape
        • Landscape Escape No. 1
        • Seascape Escape No.2
        • Landscape Escape No.2
        • Skyscape Escape
        • Timescape Escape
        • End-Piece
      • Reviews and Press
    • Offer Must End Soon >
      • Essay Jess Twyman
      • Reviews
      • Offer Must End Soon
      • Buy My Painting!
      • "Buy My Painting!" For the hard of hearing.
      • "Don't Make Me Take It All Back Home With Me!"
      • How We Won The War
      • "Stop me and buy one!"
      • 'The Cornfield'... free gift inside
      • "Catalogue!"
      • The Contemporary Art Scene
      • Camera Crash
      • "Untitled" hanging itself
      • Buy My Fucking Painting!
      • Absolut Ship !
      • Executive Toy!
      • Art Stunt Suicide Disaster
      • Roll up, Roll up. Get your Art here!
    • Big Country >
      • Big Country
      • The box you stick your head into
      • Europa, Hoek van Holland to Vladivostok
      • Caravans
      • magazine article
    • All at Sea
    • & Model >
      • Reviews
    • Give Me The Money
    • Music and domestic appliances >
      • Sketch for aeroplane
      • The Plinth
      • Cold War Monument
      • Wagon Wheels
      • Vacuum Cleaner Circle
    • ...on the wall...in boxes >
      • My Shitty Studio No.2
      • Sketch for aeroplane No.6
      • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Fire Escape
      • My horrible studio No.1
      • Untitled 240 Volts
      • On the way to the beach party
      • Toy Me No.2
      • It's for you
    • Sweet Jars, glass cases on books >
      • Thatcher
      • The council estate is coming
      • Attack drone and books
      • Muck Spreader
      • Trojan Horse
      • Security Camera
      • Move
      • Epsom Printer, Tank, God
      • Contemporary art- its the law!
      • Tank Caravans Paint Brush
      • Buy to Let
      • Section 21
  • On The Stage
    • All Roads Lead To Rome >
      • Project outline
      • reviews
    • Antarctica >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
    • Poland 3 Iran 2 >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
    • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • tours and extra stuff
    • How NOT to make a living as an Artist
    • Toy Stories
  • Outside the art gallery
    • Auspicious Phoenix Recycling Palace
    • Covid lockdown with Boris >
      • Boris zip wire
      • Covidtrix
      • what is the truth but a lie agreed upon
    • Goat Train
    • washed up Car - go >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • 'EK52 UDP'
      • 'VK02 GFK'
      • 'Y194 LPP'
      • Washed Up Car-go (Hastings)
      • Washed Up Car- go (Brighton)
    • Vanishing Point >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • Red Sports Car, East To West
      • Studebaker Camera Car, Going To The Beach
      • Kite And Candy, Buick
      • Kennedy Lincoln Continental
      • Ambulance Emergency
      • Pink Mustang, at the Golden Gate Bridge
      • Matchbox
      • Instant Gratification
    • Badgast Residency >
      • Short Essay
      • De Wrede Zee
      • Fish
      • Chips
      • Windmill
      • Panorama Mesdag
    • Selfie Slot Car Racing >
      • Project Outline
      • Film by Andy Wiltshire
      • Librarian Pit Crew
      • Experiments with sound
      • Selfie Slot Car Racing at Firstsite Gallery
      • Flitwick Library
    • Coventry Transport Museum Residency >
      • Coventry Concept
      • Poetry Vending Machine
    • Cheap Cheap >
      • Review
    • A Portrait of Casper DeBoer
    • Cranes
    • Hessle Road Residency >
      • Hessle Road (continued)
    • Reisbureau Mareado >
      • Mareado (Continued)
      • City magazine review
    • Windmills >
      • Aerial, wind, sun and radio
      • Guitar Played by the Wind >
        • Winners and Losers
      • Self Portrait
      • Jesus punches banker
    • Performance Sculptures >
      • The groundsman
      • All seeing bicycle lamp
      • Pasta 4 one
      • Revolutionary Reminder
  • publications
    • Solo projects >
      • Escape >
        • Read an Extract
      • Antarctica
      • Offer Must End Soon
      • Tangents
      • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape
      • Aerial, wind, sun and radio
    • Group Projects >
      • oceans
      • Talk to me
      • & Model
      • Middlesbrough Art Weekender
      • Translating the Street
      • 1st Sino/british Cont. Art, Yentai
      • Performance, Transport And Mobility
      • Inbetween PS1, New York and Shanghai
      • Odd Coupling
      • Landscapes of Exploration
      • Flip Shift Show Switch
      • Baudrillard Now
      • The Juddykes
      • Dr Roberts Magic Bus
      • Continental Breakfast
      • Lat (living Apart Together)
      • North. Amsterdam 2004
      • Westwijk, Vlaardingen, De Strip
      • Da Da Da Strategies Against Marketecture
      • Reisburo Mareado (The Travel Brochure)
      • Catalogus Mareado
      • Kunst Over De Grens
      • This Flat Earth
      • The Uses of an Artist
      • Kettles Yard Open 97
      • Royal College Of Art Centenary Year
      • Millennium Encyclopedia
    • Press
  • About / contact
    • Biog
    • CV >
      • Solo Exhibitions
      • Live Art
      • Residencies / Commissions
      • Group Exhibitions
      • Education
      • Career History
      • Media Coverage
    • Contact
    • are you on the right website?