CHRIS DOBROWOLSKI
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​Seascape Escape No.2

Picture
By the time he came to make the hovercraft Dobrowolski was more content at the art school and this, the third vehicle, was the result of a conscious decision to extend what was an emerging sequence of 'modes of transport'. Initially the artist felt that a logical step to follow the boat and the car was a plane. But he also thought that the technologies necessary to producing a viable aeroplane would involve too much precision. At that time he didn't have the confidence to achieve that. He felt a hovercraft would be more 'organic' in the making. When on the beach with the pedal car at Spurn Point, a spit of land that projects into the Humber, he had noticed hundreds of discarded plastic bottles that had been deposited there by the tide. He decided to use these to construct the hovercraft. He wanted some direct link between the vehicle and the landscape. Constructing the hovercraft from materials found on the beach and then taking the vehicle back to the beach seemed to be a logical, even poetic, connection. His aim was to hover from Spurn Point, which was thirty miles down stream, back up stream to the college.

At the same place on the beach from which he collected the plastic bottles he even found an abandoned hovercraft from which he took, and reconditioned, the engine.

It took me a while to get it working. It was full of water you see. I suppose in a lot of ways it was pretty stupid. I took the engine out of a perfectly good hovercraft just to put into my made-out-of-old-plastic-bottles hovercraft which never worked as well as that one would have done.


He learned how to make a hovercraft by doing it. The fact that he made a hovercraft that actually worked was important.

It has to be genuine. If you don't believe in it, how can you expect other people to believe in it? You could quite easily suggest a hovercraft made out of plastic bottles. I could have dressed up the one I took the engine from - dressed it up to make it look like it was made from plastic bottles. But it wouldn't have had the same integrity would it? I hope that when somebody looks at this work they can see that I really meant it because there are so many thousand pot rivets in it. I think that's very important. It's vital that I made these things myself. Today many artists use technicians and hardly touch the work themselves. They justify this by reference to the past when artists used apprentices to produce large works. But the thing is that I don't think it was important in the past but it's more important today that the artist makes it all. We've got all the technology now to produce things easily and quickly; genuineness, or integrity, is the one important thing that's missing.

The hovercraft is one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, 'folksy' of the vehicles in this exhibition, its riveted plastic surfaces suggesting patchwork quilting. Dobrowolski says the orange bottles are a brand of bleach, the blue ones family size bottles of Domestos... To those of us with no idea of how a hovercraft actually works and even less of how we would start making one ourselves, it is an awesome accomplishment. It inspires the kind of admiration that contemporary art so often fails (declines) to deliver to the 'ordinary' spectator - the admiration for skills that we see as beyond our own capacities. Dobrowolski may be right to insist that the necessary skills are within the reach of everyone. Whether or not that is true, what does connect with 'everyone' is the sheer achievement in the making and, not least, the scale of the ambition.

His description of his 'flight' in the hovercraft gives an interesting insight into the kind of place, condition or experience to which he might be aspiring to 'escape' with his other vehicles. ​

I got into the hovercraft, said goodbye to everybody - a car-load of friends who'd come to help me and see me off. They went back along the road and I set off across the mud-flats. I remember I rounded this bend in the river and I could see the car parked by the river bank. They were staggering their journey to watch me go past. I had to go right out into the mud 'cos it was slightly smoother. But there was still a lot of drag that was slowing me down so I was at full throttle and there was, like, a hell of a lot of noise. As I rounded the corner I noticed the car. I could see my friends watching me. In front of me there was a flock of birds feeding on these mud flats. Now, I couldn't steer for fear of stalling so I had to keep going in a straight line through them. Obviously they heard me coming and there was this one moment when they all took off as I approached them and there was this amazing moment when I was hovering along surrounded by all these flying birds. Maybe it was just knowing that I was then centre of attention but I actually shouted out, 'This is it!' It was a sort of nice poetic moment. 'Yeah! This is it!' and as I said it there was this enormous BANG and the engine barrel blew up and left me stranded there. I pulled it a few times. It wouldn't start. So I got out of this thing. It took a while to work out what was wrong with it. By this time there was about a hundred yards of mud between me and the car on the river bank. So I sludged through all this mud. (There's a photograph somewhere with the hovercraft and this trail of my foot-prints). The car with my friends in it was a Citroen with electric windows and central locking. When I finally approached the car it was obvious what I wanted and, as I got close, I heard the central locking snapping down and all the electric windows going up. I had to wander back to the hovercraft. They all sort of felt sorry for me and came to help me. It took two hours to get it ashore. The mud was so sticky that two people had to get hold of the handles at the front with one person at the back. You could drag it up to yourself. Then you had to get your feet out of the mud to move back a pace and do the same thing again.

This apparently romantic and heroic encounter with the birds leaves us uncertain of the implications for nature; something to be overpowered or something with which to identify completely? Either way the attempt fails and the inevitability of the failure is a condition of the work.


​

Picture
  • 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?