HesiTate Balgarvie East

Carl E. Smyth

Early in 2020 Covid 19 introduced society to fear, restriction, alienation and broken connections. We became infected with a forced isolation from our friends, neighbours and families. This closing-off procedure, aimed to help us survive, delivered us to a remote station where we were obliged to distance ourselves from the natural human desire and need to touch, to engage and to connect.

It was during this stage of lockdown that I considered making a statement in colour and shapes, in the front garden of my home. This grew into project that created much curiosity from neighbours and passers-by. It was an invasion of creative activity and energy into a quiet suburban street. Cars slowed, cyclists craned their necks, dog walkers and small children from the local school stopped in their tracks. Part of the intention for the work was to deliver a little interlude from the instructions of the state, to remind people caught in the daily narrative of news reporting to stop and smell the proverbial roses. Another aspect of the project was creative therapy that I shared with my teenage sons who helped out making the work.

The duration of the installation was temporary. After a few months the weather took its toll on the paint and the weeds began growing through the ground covering. Its decay matched the time it was no longer a surprise to the locals. This had become a quiet shared familiarity with the project and I knew the memory would remain in its absence.  The novelty had gone but curiosity remained.  I felt good about having brought some colour, and something different to focus on, even for a moment’s hesitation.

Phase 2 – Autumn 2021

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against the ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of the night.

– Kahlil Gibran

‘We all come from somewhere else’ is a follow-up HesiTate installation project on our street using the front garden as an art site visible to all who pass by. The caravan was entirely hand crafted in timber and steel and painted at my workshop, dismantled and transported in sections to be rebuilt at Balgarvie Crescent in Cupar, Fife. The design is inspired by traditional Romany caravan structure and decoration which I improvised in brighter and striking colour schemes and motifs using spray stencil and brush technique. It is accompanied by a text sign along side the caravan that faces pedestrians coming in the opposite direction. We have a good footfall at this location being close to schools and the local shop. Motorists also catch a glimpse of the display day and night as there is a street lamp a couple of meters distance. I installed a system of solar lights illuminating both the caravan and the text sign. They automatically light up around dusk and give bright definition to the text sign and detail on the caravan for a few hours before fading out.

This work is a statement about identity and inclusion. Throughout 2021 a troubling media narrative was occurring regarding displaced people and the influx of refugees. I was reflecting on how we situate ourselves and barricade our sense of identity with conditioning and tradition and in doing so deny the truth that for a’ that we are all enmeshed in a shared humanity. If we can imagine or experience empathy we come closer to protecting our own rights and the rights of others. The symbolic caravan represents a practical living solution for transitory people. Travellers have been described as being on the fringes of conventional society, following different social codes, existing in different systems. This community where I live has a mix of people from various economic status, health and ethnicity and the project is intended to remind us that although while we all come from here, we all come from somewhere else.