'A SOCIAL OUTING'
91 Canadian Red Cedar picnic tables
11x11x5.5m (36x36x18ft)
"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'
UK National Garden Festival, Gateshead 1990
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 public
artworks - and were supposed to attract future investment and hence local
workforce re-engagement.