Graham Budgett: 'A SOCIAL OUTING' - 91 Canadian Red Cedar picnic tables
11x11x5.5m [36x36x18ft] - UK National Garden Festival, Gateshead, 1990
"The pyramid is envisioned as a site of leisure and consumption,
but the significance of the picnic table is its ordering of our experience
of 'nature' - a cultivation of the wilderness from a scenic viewpoint.
Here the wilderness might be 'human nature' or 'the post-industrial landscape',
in any case a rationalisation is occuring, a garden being plotted,
an order imposed."
- from the proposal of A Social Outing for 'Festival Landmarks'
- from the proposal of A Social Outing for 'Festival Landmarks'
National Garden Festivals were established in Britain in the 1980's as a means of revitalising large post-industrial urban wastelands. They featured exhibits with a broad horticultural/recreational theme - as well as commissioned public artworks - and were supposed to attract future investment and hence local workforce re-engagement.
Graham Budgett