'Seascape Escape No.2. The hovercraft heads off into the distance accross the mud flats at low tide on the river Humber.
A page from the book entitled:
'2002-2004, Westwijk, Vlaardingen, DE STRIP'
'Landscape Escape No.2'
2002- 2004 Westwijk, Vlaardingen -De Strip
Canis Zijlmans- (A translation from the original Dutch text)
On December 22, (2002) an extremely entertaining audience with the British visual artist Chris Dobrowolski. Held in the old video rental shop, the lecture was crafted from home movies and slides about his work. Children and some of the elderly who did not speak English, left. The interested people stayed and hung on to Dobrowolski's lips for the full two hours, even when he played his noisy sound machine with steering wheel and gaudy car grill. Horns sounded in all pitches, lights blinked and jets of water sprayed over the audience in the front row. The spectators still loved it.
The performance 'Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape' tells how Dobrowolski's father, a Polish soldier, after the war, missed the boat to Canada and was forced to stay in England. He started a family in Essex. In the year of Chris's birth, he bought a Triumph Herald that provided working-class family freedom, picnics and fun. When Chris turned eighteen, the car is given to him. At an exhibition in the renowned Ferens Gallery in Kingston upon Hull he put his childhood photos in the family car as part of the exhibit.
Dobrowolski painted landscapes on telephones, which maintain contact with elsewhere and paintings of whalers far from a home port, on pieces of old wreckage. On eggshells he painted seascapes that suggest a longing for what lies beyond the horizon. Before going to the Royal College of Art his first educational internship was in Hull. His friends warned him: it's always windy there, it stinks of fish and the people are horrible to you (if you come from down south). Stupid stories, that when he got there- "Were all true". Chris Dobrowolski said- Escape without knowing where he is going is an important role in his work. Searching for overseas contact he set loose hundreds of small wooden sailing boats with his address on into the wide open seas. Like Robinson Crusoe, looking for ways to escape, he found driftwood on the high tide line along the north bank of the estuary to build a rowing/sailing boat. He called it ‘Friday’. While doing this he also found a toy sailboat with an address, one which he himself had put into the water. A tape recorder and a little messy camera work document the journey of Chris and shipmate Eddie. The trip does not go smoothly, a buoy is missed by a hair. A bow wave of a real ship, three meters long, fills ‘Friday’ full of water and the port authorities save the two from the sinking craft. The ‘Friday’ is 'ritually' burned when it washes ashore. The next attempt at fleeing was a hovercraft. It was built using found plastic bottles and bags and used a second-hand engine after Chris went to the library to study how to make one. He slips on a moped helmet during the sea trial of about a mile and a half across the mud flats along the river, before the engine explodes.
Canis Zijlmans- (A translation from the original Dutch text)
On December 22, (2002) an extremely entertaining audience with the British visual artist Chris Dobrowolski. Held in the old video rental shop, the lecture was crafted from home movies and slides about his work. Children and some of the elderly who did not speak English, left. The interested people stayed and hung on to Dobrowolski's lips for the full two hours, even when he played his noisy sound machine with steering wheel and gaudy car grill. Horns sounded in all pitches, lights blinked and jets of water sprayed over the audience in the front row. The spectators still loved it.
The performance 'Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape' tells how Dobrowolski's father, a Polish soldier, after the war, missed the boat to Canada and was forced to stay in England. He started a family in Essex. In the year of Chris's birth, he bought a Triumph Herald that provided working-class family freedom, picnics and fun. When Chris turned eighteen, the car is given to him. At an exhibition in the renowned Ferens Gallery in Kingston upon Hull he put his childhood photos in the family car as part of the exhibit.
Dobrowolski painted landscapes on telephones, which maintain contact with elsewhere and paintings of whalers far from a home port, on pieces of old wreckage. On eggshells he painted seascapes that suggest a longing for what lies beyond the horizon. Before going to the Royal College of Art his first educational internship was in Hull. His friends warned him: it's always windy there, it stinks of fish and the people are horrible to you (if you come from down south). Stupid stories, that when he got there- "Were all true". Chris Dobrowolski said- Escape without knowing where he is going is an important role in his work. Searching for overseas contact he set loose hundreds of small wooden sailing boats with his address on into the wide open seas. Like Robinson Crusoe, looking for ways to escape, he found driftwood on the high tide line along the north bank of the estuary to build a rowing/sailing boat. He called it ‘Friday’. While doing this he also found a toy sailboat with an address, one which he himself had put into the water. A tape recorder and a little messy camera work document the journey of Chris and shipmate Eddie. The trip does not go smoothly, a buoy is missed by a hair. A bow wave of a real ship, three meters long, fills ‘Friday’ full of water and the port authorities save the two from the sinking craft. The ‘Friday’ is 'ritually' burned when it washes ashore. The next attempt at fleeing was a hovercraft. It was built using found plastic bottles and bags and used a second-hand engine after Chris went to the library to study how to make one. He slips on a moped helmet during the sea trial of about a mile and a half across the mud flats along the river, before the engine explodes.
A page from the book entitled:
'2002-2004, Westwijk, Vlaardingen, DE STRIP'
'Skyscape Escape'
An important building material for Dobrowolski is the tea chest. A typically English thing they traditionally get their stuff in such a wooden box. The Brit built his next 'flight' the two-person pedal powered car. T-4-2 ('tea for two') has a windshield consisting of a picture frame on a stick so that he can sit out of the Wind. (He actually travelled here to Holland on it once). He asked the authorities what the restrictions for driving on the highway were but was not provided with an answer. He went on a journey anyway to the eastern tip of the headland north of the Humber with Eddie getting lost on country roads. The very heroic photo of his father next to a military vehicle and his father's fondness for motorized lawn mowers made Dobrowolski venture into the manufacture of a real tank. A technical tour de force, the artist drove it across the square in front of ‘The Strip’, to much admiration. Powered by four lawnmower motors, this fire-breathing tracked vehicle is still on show in the garage at the back of the of Studio 2, The peepholes in the gun turret are trimmed with picture frames. The armor is made from the landscape motifs of English biscuits tins. Film footage shows the tank as in a military parade as it drives over a meadow. The camera captures a scene of the tank showing its strength, with tracks rolling, crushing and ‘destroying’ a television set, which remained undamaged when the tank runs over it.
His latest flight project focuses on the air space. Based on a book from around 1935, written by Henry Mignet for the flying amateur, he built his own flying machine - The Flying Flea. The original plans for this little plane cost many pilots lives because there was an unforseen construction flaw in the design. Controlling the flying machine turns out to be more difficult than people are led to believe by the book. Reading the last chapter ‘How to fly the Flying Flea’ is not enough to become a proficient flier. Dobrowolski is now taking flying lessons and this summer he will take to the air. For the past few months The Flying Flea has been in the showroom window of Studio 2 inspiring the imagination of many passers by. On the walls inside the studio are Dobrowolski's bird's eye view fantasies. There are landscapes painted in discarded boxes. A truck, with a swivel arm and a paint brush where the bucket would be, paints its own surroundings. In another diorama painted in a potato box, in absolute silence, a fighter jet hovers directly over a small hut.
His latest flight project focuses on the air space. Based on a book from around 1935, written by Henry Mignet for the flying amateur, he built his own flying machine - The Flying Flea. The original plans for this little plane cost many pilots lives because there was an unforseen construction flaw in the design. Controlling the flying machine turns out to be more difficult than people are led to believe by the book. Reading the last chapter ‘How to fly the Flying Flea’ is not enough to become a proficient flier. Dobrowolski is now taking flying lessons and this summer he will take to the air. For the past few months The Flying Flea has been in the showroom window of Studio 2 inspiring the imagination of many passers by. On the walls inside the studio are Dobrowolski's bird's eye view fantasies. There are landscapes painted in discarded boxes. A truck, with a swivel arm and a paint brush where the bucket would be, paints its own surroundings. In another diorama painted in a potato box, in absolute silence, a fighter jet hovers directly over a small hut.
My toy boats just before they were launched into the river Humber.
TOTAL THEATRE MAGAZINE Cassie Werber
Dr Robert’s Magic Bus
Anthony Roberts’ clever commissioning and programming for the Magic Bus is particularly evident in Chris Dobrowolski’s Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape! The quirky intimacy of the setting provides just the right rough and ready backdrop for Dobrowolski’s story of attempted escape from art school, by the method of fashioning a series of increasingly ambitious machines, beginning with a boat which floats (for a while), and culminating in… well, it would be unfair to preempt the destination of this warm, satisfying piece about journeys.
The do-it-yourself nature of this performance-lecture, in which the single performer employs music, slide and video projection and an easy, conversational delivery, aligns well with its subject matter, the creation of interactive pieces of art, machines with a tendency to break down. Self-deprecating in style, the performance raises interesting questions, including the origins of artistic impulse, and the place of art in society. Through the gentle narrative, we find ourselves considering where is the best place for a piece of art; Dobrowolski gives us several options, including the mud flats of the Humber and the pristine interior of a dedicated gallery space. Along the way we consider where ‘legitimate’ inspiration comes from, and where the products of that inspiration should go. When the young Dobrowolski releases a fleet of small, beautifully fashioned boats into the tides with only a few blurry photographs to record their existence, ideas of expendability, value and the investment of objects with preciousness come into sharp focus.
Those who taking this imaginative bus ride find ourselves pondering the questions it raises long after the temporal adventure is over.
Dr Robert’s Magic Bus
Anthony Roberts’ clever commissioning and programming for the Magic Bus is particularly evident in Chris Dobrowolski’s Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape! The quirky intimacy of the setting provides just the right rough and ready backdrop for Dobrowolski’s story of attempted escape from art school, by the method of fashioning a series of increasingly ambitious machines, beginning with a boat which floats (for a while), and culminating in… well, it would be unfair to preempt the destination of this warm, satisfying piece about journeys.
The do-it-yourself nature of this performance-lecture, in which the single performer employs music, slide and video projection and an easy, conversational delivery, aligns well with its subject matter, the creation of interactive pieces of art, machines with a tendency to break down. Self-deprecating in style, the performance raises interesting questions, including the origins of artistic impulse, and the place of art in society. Through the gentle narrative, we find ourselves considering where is the best place for a piece of art; Dobrowolski gives us several options, including the mud flats of the Humber and the pristine interior of a dedicated gallery space. Along the way we consider where ‘legitimate’ inspiration comes from, and where the products of that inspiration should go. When the young Dobrowolski releases a fleet of small, beautifully fashioned boats into the tides with only a few blurry photographs to record their existence, ideas of expendability, value and the investment of objects with preciousness come into sharp focus.
Those who taking this imaginative bus ride find ourselves pondering the questions it raises long after the temporal adventure is over.
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Scotland on Sunday 2006 Anthony Robert's interviewed by Mark Fisher |
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This link will take you to a review by David Thomson for Tangents (The Home of Unpopular Culture). Thomson saw the show at Colchester arts centre in 2006 before it went to the Edinburgh fringe festival. A literature professor from the U.S. he was in Colchester at the time lecturing at the University of Essex.
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'Real creativity lurks outside the mainstream' ... Anthony Roberts, Miss High Leg Kick and other Magic Bus performers. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
The Guardian Edinburgh festival 2006
All aboard!
Inspired by G2's Routemaster bus, the best venue at this year's Fringe is hosting everything from dinner battles to catwalk shows. Maddy Costa takes a day ticket
...after which there's just one show to go. Unfortunately for stagehand Steve Nice, it's also the longest and most technically complex, involving a series of temperamental Super-8 films whose soundtracks need to be synchronised individually. On paper, Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape is a prospect to make the heart sink: it lasts two hours, and consists of one man, artist Chris Dobrowolski, describing the work he created during and since his time at art school. But the show is so charming, so laden with warmth and humour, that the time whizzes by. Over the years, Dobrowolski has constructed a boat from driftwood, a hovercraft from plastic bottles and, most spectacularly, a plane from tea crates. To hear him describe each machine while sitting in a Routemaster - after all, one of the loveliest of all transport designs - is magical, and makes you secretly hope it inspires him to build a bus next.
All aboard!
Inspired by G2's Routemaster bus, the best venue at this year's Fringe is hosting everything from dinner battles to catwalk shows. Maddy Costa takes a day ticket
...after which there's just one show to go. Unfortunately for stagehand Steve Nice, it's also the longest and most technically complex, involving a series of temperamental Super-8 films whose soundtracks need to be synchronised individually. On paper, Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape is a prospect to make the heart sink: it lasts two hours, and consists of one man, artist Chris Dobrowolski, describing the work he created during and since his time at art school. But the show is so charming, so laden with warmth and humour, that the time whizzes by. Over the years, Dobrowolski has constructed a boat from driftwood, a hovercraft from plastic bottles and, most spectacularly, a plane from tea crates. To hear him describe each machine while sitting in a Routemaster - after all, one of the loveliest of all transport designs - is magical, and makes you secretly hope it inspires him to build a bus next.
Being stopped by the police on the pedal car.
The Observer Edinburgh festival 2006
Susannah Clapp
On Dr Roberts's Routemaster, even breakdowns have a point: en route to Edinburgh, the bus ground to a halt in Tony Blair's Sedgefield. The spirit-of-the- Fringe vehicle is perfect for the transport obsessive Chris Dobrowolski, a constructor of Heath Robinson-style locomotives who, in Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape!, makes an idiosyncratic autobiography - part film, part storytelling - out of his excursions. As an art student he built a graceful driftwood boat which sunk on its maiden voyage. Dobrowolski, very long and lean, slithers down the aisle of the Routemaster to help crank film of the shipwreck through an ancient projector, warning: 'You'll hear a lot of swearing in an Essex voice. That's me.'
He had to burn his boat - deemed a danger to shipping - but exhibited the cinders in his end-of-year show. He went on to make, and film, a plane papered with news reports of his exploits, and a lawnmower-propelled tank covered in Constable paintings, which sent massed pictures of The Haywain lurching through their own East Anglian landscape. Out on his half-bike, half-car, he was stopped by the police who, puzzled as to exactly what made him illegal, came up with: 'You're not serious.' Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
Susannah Clapp
On Dr Roberts's Routemaster, even breakdowns have a point: en route to Edinburgh, the bus ground to a halt in Tony Blair's Sedgefield. The spirit-of-the- Fringe vehicle is perfect for the transport obsessive Chris Dobrowolski, a constructor of Heath Robinson-style locomotives who, in Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape!, makes an idiosyncratic autobiography - part film, part storytelling - out of his excursions. As an art student he built a graceful driftwood boat which sunk on its maiden voyage. Dobrowolski, very long and lean, slithers down the aisle of the Routemaster to help crank film of the shipwreck through an ancient projector, warning: 'You'll hear a lot of swearing in an Essex voice. That's me.'
He had to burn his boat - deemed a danger to shipping - but exhibited the cinders in his end-of-year show. He went on to make, and film, a plane papered with news reports of his exploits, and a lawnmower-propelled tank covered in Constable paintings, which sent massed pictures of The Haywain lurching through their own East Anglian landscape. Out on his half-bike, half-car, he was stopped by the police who, puzzled as to exactly what made him illegal, came up with: 'You're not serious.' Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
Dad next to a small tank in the war. He gets a mention in the show and also a mention in the Guardian
The Guardian Sacred festival Chelsea theatre 2008
Experimental theatre is Sacred
At Chelsea's festival of live art performance you can have a romantic interlude in a portable building and get your knickers in a twist with complete strangers Maxie Szalwinska
...Landscape Seascape Skyscape Escape is a hugely endearing tale that grew out of the obsessions of artist Chris Dobrowolski, who has built a series of worryingly rickety vehicles, including a hovercraft from plastic bottles. Dobrowolski is Polish by origin, and the segment of the show about his father getting to England via Siberia is quite a dark little footnote. The show-cum-lecture also uses fragments of Super-8 film to smashing effect.
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Art Monthly October 2006
(A note from me on this article) It was unusual to have a review from the 'art press' for this show but Sally O'Reilly wrote a piece about contemporary art within the context of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which is primarily a theatre/comedy platform. L.S.S.E. is included in the last section of the article. At the time I was a bit hurt that she dissmisses 15 years worth of work as 'daft'. 'Populist' is also a questionable accusation as the show was at least two hours long! However the article does highlight some of the difficult paradoxical issues that arise from putting 'art' into this type of accessable arena. Years later, a friend that knows Sally, told me she often writes articles that offend people when she's actually trying to be complementary. Personally, I like to think L.S.S.E. 'was' a 'meta artwork' as 'ontologically layered as baklava' - maybe Sally O'Reilly did too,.. I'm just not entirely sure. |
Dr Robert's Magic Bus.
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Edinburgh Round-up Sally O'Reilly
...Art, it seems, is still insistent that the live event is immediate and unrehearsed and that the representational space, narrative and polish of theatre are vehemently avoided. Whether this is to the good is up for debate. Essex-based artist Chris Dobrowolski's slide and film show on Dr Robert's Magic Bus was the exception to this distinction. The bus was programmed by the Colchester Arts Centre and included a number of cross-over pieces that nonetheless read entirely as artworks: Holly & Ben's invitation to watch them eat identical dinners together every night of the festival, for instance, is a prime example of live art's tendency to prioritise form. Dobrowolski's engaging slide show, on the other hand, was a complete reversal of this. Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape, 2006, is essentially a version of the artist's talk that he gives to fine art students in universities, perhaps with a little extra explanation for festival punters. Dobrowolski shows slides and Super 8 films of his previous projects, from a hovercraft made of plastic bottles found on the beach to a light aircraft made from packing cases and newspaper cuttings on his own art- works, providing an enthusiastic and anecdotal account with a nostalgic soundtrack. In short, his practice is condensed into a story of a young man leaving home, making daft artworks and pursuing pipedreams, presenting an entirely populist understanding of art that is totally devoid of critical and conceptual content. What is incredibly interesting, though, is how utterly impossible it is to decide whether this is a meta artwork, in which the artist uses previous work and the context of the festival to make something as ontologically layered as baklava, or simply an example of the reductive tendencies of outreach programmes.
...Art, it seems, is still insistent that the live event is immediate and unrehearsed and that the representational space, narrative and polish of theatre are vehemently avoided. Whether this is to the good is up for debate. Essex-based artist Chris Dobrowolski's slide and film show on Dr Robert's Magic Bus was the exception to this distinction. The bus was programmed by the Colchester Arts Centre and included a number of cross-over pieces that nonetheless read entirely as artworks: Holly & Ben's invitation to watch them eat identical dinners together every night of the festival, for instance, is a prime example of live art's tendency to prioritise form. Dobrowolski's engaging slide show, on the other hand, was a complete reversal of this. Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape, 2006, is essentially a version of the artist's talk that he gives to fine art students in universities, perhaps with a little extra explanation for festival punters. Dobrowolski shows slides and Super 8 films of his previous projects, from a hovercraft made of plastic bottles found on the beach to a light aircraft made from packing cases and newspaper cuttings on his own art- works, providing an enthusiastic and anecdotal account with a nostalgic soundtrack. In short, his practice is condensed into a story of a young man leaving home, making daft artworks and pursuing pipedreams, presenting an entirely populist understanding of art that is totally devoid of critical and conceptual content. What is incredibly interesting, though, is how utterly impossible it is to decide whether this is a meta artwork, in which the artist uses previous work and the context of the festival to make something as ontologically layered as baklava, or simply an example of the reductive tendencies of outreach programmes.
'Skyscape Escape' lifts off
The Guardian
Picks of the day
Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Escape
Delightful tale that grew out of the obsessions of artist Chris Dobrowolski, who has built a hovercraft from plastic bottles.
(It does'nt look like much but being one of the Guardian's 'Picks of the day' at the Edinburgh festival felt like a big deal at the time. We 'sold out' very quickly that day,- sadly it was the last day of the festival)