CHRIS DOBROWOLSKI
  • Home
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      • Train Wave
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      • Project Outline
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      • Toy Sledge
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      • Eating Penguins
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      • Toy Snowmobile
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      • 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?

Seascape  Escape

Picture
The earliest major piece in the exhibition - a sea-going boat - actually no longer exists. It had a short and heroic life. Its presence is eloquently replaced by a model of it, with crew, in a bottle sited in comic solemnity on a copy of Robinson Crusoe.

I'd always made ships in bottles. Activities where it wasn't like Art with a capital A.

​The boat was made in Dobrowolski's first year as a fine art student at Hull. He made it as a way of escaping from art school. Though clearly a personal invention (not based on any professional blue-print) the boat, made from drift-wood, was built to survive the anticipated physical realities of a real journey at sea. The constructional and mechanical skills he demonstrates in all his work he has taught himself through trial and error. He remembers the importance of graduating, in his go-kart days, from nails to screws. It is important to him that his skills are within the competence of everyone who wants to bother. However, while the construction methods are 'purely functional' the boat as a whole surely alludes, with some irony, to a tradition of improvised fairytale boats. 'The owl and the pussycat put to sea...' The photograph of it on its maiden, and only, voyage shows the three-man crew of art students in naval hats. Benny Hill salutes must have been irresistible.

​The act of escaping, however symbolic, was as important to the work as the boat itself which was the means to that end. I asked if the boat was, in effect, an element in a performance piece.

I not only wanted to escape from art college. I was trying, and failing, to escape from being pigeon-holed as a painter or a sculptor or a performance artist. There wasn't much organisation about the event; we just went when the tide was right. Time and tide they wait for no man and they don't wait for performance artists either.

                                                                ...............................................


The art college was right on the banks of the Humber. It was built on a filled-in dock. In the book Robinson Crusoe, he leaves from Hull and the Council, or Tourist Information, had decided to build a monument saying that he left from this public garden where our college was. To all intents and purposes Robinson Crusoe left from my art college. What was nice about it was that I didn't know that. There I was one day trying to escape from art college, building a boat out of drift wood I'd found on the River Humber and, walking home one day, I walked past this monument to Robinson Crusoe. I thought, that's a nice coincidence really. So the boat got called Friday.
                                                               .....................................................

I made it to escape in but it took so long to make that the end of term had come and everyone had gone home for the summer. I ended up staying behind to finish building the boat. The idea was to escape in it but it ended up keeping me there longer. When I launched it the caretaker and technicians were the only ones there to help me. The launch was cancelled a couple of times because it was too rough. When we did go it was all a bit of a panic. The Pilot Launch was going to follow us but the day we went I didn't realise that the Launch didn't have the same people on it that I'd made the agreement with. So, when we got in the water and went down stream the Pilot Launch just waved us off and went in the opposite direction. I also didn't know that I'd actually picked the worst day that I could have done. It was a Spring tide. At the start the tide was coming in really fast but it took so long to set up the mast on the boat that when we got the thing in the water the tide was going out. We needed the tide coming in to cross it safely. As it was the three of us - me, Eddie and Paul - just went down stream.

                                                                  .....................................................

​

We couldn't steer or anything 'cos there was no wind. We got nicely into the shipping lane. I had a tape recorder in the bottom of the boat. I thought of it as a black box flight recorder. Also I had a really cheap home-movie camera with a tiny view-finder. On the tape you can hear this stirrup pump. It was like the ones that the air raid wardens used in Dad's Army. I was using it as a bilge pump. There's a lot of panic when a big wave picks us up and drops us. But then an air of calm comes over us 'cos we think that if we can get through that we can get through anything. And then you hear somebody say, 'We're going to hit that buoy!' So I get the cine-camera out to film the buoy - and that's when I realise how fast we're going. I'm looking through this tiny view-finder and I can see this buoy getting bigger - really quickly... And then there's a commotion on the tape as we hit it very hard, and swing round... At this point a tug boat saw us and came out to rescue us.

                                                                  .....................................................​


Through the whole making of the boat there was - not a sense of doom - but, like, an impending sense of something important happening... There was a lot of walking down to the river and looking out across the water and trying to imagine my boat on it. And then you'd go there another windy day and see big waves and think, 'Oh, a bigger boat... A lot of suspense was built up so when we collided with the buoy, just got rescued and got off there was this real sense of anti-climax. We were on the tug and they were pulling my boat moored along side. Now, the thing is, as the boat's going up stream the wash from the tug is, sort of, like, forcing water into my boat. Plus we were also moored along-side the outlet for their bilge pump so they were pumping water straight in. We're looking over the side of the tug into it and I'm thinking, 'It's gonna sink.' The tape recorder was in there and this Dad's Army pump and this bell which was quite important 'cos we'd borrowed it from Eddie's mum. It was her door bell so we had to get it back. I panicked slightly and said, 'Look, I'm gonna have to go back in and salvage these important items. You know there's that thing in Hollywood movies where somebody goes back into the burning house - or the sinking ship - to create a bit of suspense. It was a bit like that. I got back in the boat and, in a panic situation, all your fingers turn to thumbs don't they? I couldn't undo this bell. I got the tape recorder and picked up the pump but I'd wound the hose around this eyelet thing and it was in a big knot. I thought, 'Well, rather than undo it all I'd just break the hose off.' I handed the pump to a friend on the tug, put my foot against the side, and said, 'Hold it tight. I'm gonna pull the hose off!' Now, amazingly, at this point what I hadn't realised was that the rope that was tying us to the tug had snapped. So when I did break the hose it was the only thing holding me to the side of the tug. And then I look up and I see those big rubber tyres that they have on the side of ships were going past me. Then I realise what's happened. I reach out - but the tug was inches away from my finger-tips and then it was gone... It was going up stream and I was going down stream - and sinking. I managed to find a bucket and kept the water out long enough for the tug to come right round and pull me off. As I got off, my boat just wobbled, turned over and we watched it disappear down stream. It was just like a corny movie but of course it was all horribly real.



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?