To those of us not mechanically minded, the tank, like the hovercraft, is a particularly impressive piece of improvised engineering. Powered by garden lawn-mower engines and armed with a viscious looking garden flame- gun, the ingenuity involved in adapting these and structuring them into a working vehicle is inspirational. But, characteristically, the tank is not simply a novelty side-show piece. Armoured with Constable reproductions, it is probably the most intensely paradoxical of all the vehicles in the exhibition. Constable has been accorded iconic status as a painter of tranquillity and peace. His work has also been claimed as quintessentially English. So to camouflage a weapon of destruction with his paintings generates several ironies intensified by the fact that these images are reproductions which have lived in people's homes before the artist acquired them from car-boot sales. The work speaks of the power of images, and the ways in which they are purveyed, to shape perceptions of reality.
The reproductions came in these, sort of, not so tasteful gold frames which I've taken off and used for the actual framework on the inside and on these vision slots as well. So if you're actually in the tank you're looking out through a frame.
The fact that, in this exhibition, the tank is in process of crushing a television set might suggest that the media's role in framing and prioritising events is particularly at issue. But such ideological possibilities in his work are not underlined by the artist. What he emphasises is that he wanted a direct and evident connection with landscape which he felt his earlier pieces had not demonstrated clearly enough. He had been disappointed that people viewing the earlier vehicles had not recognised this connection. Though the plastic bottles from which the hovercraft was made, for example, were collected from the landscape they were just plastic bottles to anyone other than the artist. In what he felt was a deliberately 'unsubtle' move he decided to leave nothing to doubt by making a tank out of landscapes.
You know what I was saying about the car - being that dot in the landscape. Well there's something I really like about going in straight lines. You can't do straight lines on land like you can on sea unless you've got a tank. The Russian tanks came across Europe in straight lines. They don't have to adhere to the road system. I think when they first came out tanks were actually called 'land ships'.
This ambition to travel in straight lines raises similar uncertainties to the experience with the birds in the hovercraft. Is this a preoccupation with power over nature, or a romantic contrast between notions of freedom and man-made systems of constraint?
It is difficult to separate the tank, and its references to Englishness, from the knowledge that Dobrowolski's father was a Polish immigrant who settled in England after the war.
I can remember this story my dad told me about his first impressions of England. He was a Polish soldier, the war had ended, history meant that they couldn't go back to Poland so he signed up to come to England. (I'll have to do an accent for this. My Dad learnt all his English on building sites). "We got off of the train at Halstead. We had to march to transit camp. Long march down the long, winding roads. Green hedges hanging over the road looking out over beautiful ripe golden fields of wheat. The sun was shining. We undone our top buttons and I thought then, 'What a beautiful country we have come to!' And you know, Christopher ...that's f***ing rained ever since..."
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While I was making the tank I found a picture of my father standing on a tank during the war in army uniform. When I first drove the tank to film it I came out of the field and passed a tractor going in. It made me think of my father who came here at the end of the war. It was like 'swords to ploughshares' ... a sort of symbolic contrast.
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I didn't want it to look pretty. It was covered with these Constable prints and I did notice that it was starting to look pretty. I wanted it to come back to being a tank. I actually wanted something properly dangerous - hence the flame thrower. A garden flame gun it's called. Obviously the petrol tank's inside and is quite dangerous. A local television company came to film the tank for the local news. I told Thomas - my assistant as I called him to get in the tank and prime this gun. It's got, like, a pump on it to put the pressure in it and a little gauge to tell you the pressure. The gauge went up to sixty but I don't think I'd ever tried it above thirty, twenty five or something. I said, 'Go and prime the gun up,' and he got in and put the lid down. I was occupied talking to the film crew. Out of the corner of my eye I remember seeing the tank gently rocking backwards and forwards as he pumped it up. I remember, about twenty minutes later, the lid opening and he said, 'I've done it. Sixty pounds per square inch.' I didn't think anything of it at the time. But the television bloke gave me instructions. 'Pull forwards four yards, stop and fire.' So we pulled forwards four yards, opened the tap to let the paraffin out and the flame shot out about sixteen foot and nearly, but didn't, set fire to the camera crew!
The reproductions came in these, sort of, not so tasteful gold frames which I've taken off and used for the actual framework on the inside and on these vision slots as well. So if you're actually in the tank you're looking out through a frame.
The fact that, in this exhibition, the tank is in process of crushing a television set might suggest that the media's role in framing and prioritising events is particularly at issue. But such ideological possibilities in his work are not underlined by the artist. What he emphasises is that he wanted a direct and evident connection with landscape which he felt his earlier pieces had not demonstrated clearly enough. He had been disappointed that people viewing the earlier vehicles had not recognised this connection. Though the plastic bottles from which the hovercraft was made, for example, were collected from the landscape they were just plastic bottles to anyone other than the artist. In what he felt was a deliberately 'unsubtle' move he decided to leave nothing to doubt by making a tank out of landscapes.
You know what I was saying about the car - being that dot in the landscape. Well there's something I really like about going in straight lines. You can't do straight lines on land like you can on sea unless you've got a tank. The Russian tanks came across Europe in straight lines. They don't have to adhere to the road system. I think when they first came out tanks were actually called 'land ships'.
This ambition to travel in straight lines raises similar uncertainties to the experience with the birds in the hovercraft. Is this a preoccupation with power over nature, or a romantic contrast between notions of freedom and man-made systems of constraint?
It is difficult to separate the tank, and its references to Englishness, from the knowledge that Dobrowolski's father was a Polish immigrant who settled in England after the war.
I can remember this story my dad told me about his first impressions of England. He was a Polish soldier, the war had ended, history meant that they couldn't go back to Poland so he signed up to come to England. (I'll have to do an accent for this. My Dad learnt all his English on building sites). "We got off of the train at Halstead. We had to march to transit camp. Long march down the long, winding roads. Green hedges hanging over the road looking out over beautiful ripe golden fields of wheat. The sun was shining. We undone our top buttons and I thought then, 'What a beautiful country we have come to!' And you know, Christopher ...that's f***ing rained ever since..."
......................
While I was making the tank I found a picture of my father standing on a tank during the war in army uniform. When I first drove the tank to film it I came out of the field and passed a tractor going in. It made me think of my father who came here at the end of the war. It was like 'swords to ploughshares' ... a sort of symbolic contrast.
......................
I didn't want it to look pretty. It was covered with these Constable prints and I did notice that it was starting to look pretty. I wanted it to come back to being a tank. I actually wanted something properly dangerous - hence the flame thrower. A garden flame gun it's called. Obviously the petrol tank's inside and is quite dangerous. A local television company came to film the tank for the local news. I told Thomas - my assistant as I called him to get in the tank and prime this gun. It's got, like, a pump on it to put the pressure in it and a little gauge to tell you the pressure. The gauge went up to sixty but I don't think I'd ever tried it above thirty, twenty five or something. I said, 'Go and prime the gun up,' and he got in and put the lid down. I was occupied talking to the film crew. Out of the corner of my eye I remember seeing the tank gently rocking backwards and forwards as he pumped it up. I remember, about twenty minutes later, the lid opening and he said, 'I've done it. Sixty pounds per square inch.' I didn't think anything of it at the time. But the television bloke gave me instructions. 'Pull forwards four yards, stop and fire.' So we pulled forwards four yards, opened the tap to let the paraffin out and the flame shot out about sixteen foot and nearly, but didn't, set fire to the camera crew!
