Behind Closed Doors

The Secret Garden finished in June 2008, over the summer the undergrowth has begun to take the space back as its own, the budlea has started to come back, this time its flowering after being cut back. There are wild flowers growing which never had a chance before due to the canopy of unmanaged budlea blocking out any light. there are even tomato plants growing from the seeds dropped from sandwiches we ate during our time there - the place is beginning to look like a garden.

We have decided to continue working in the space, and are hoping to reside there for a further 18months. Where I documented the clearing of the space for The Secret Garden project I am now interested in documenting the return of nature.

The space - now named The Rea Garden is now expected to be divided into two areas, firstly the ‘garden’ area which was cleared and housed the shipping containers for The Secret Garden is now to be a space to host artist led projects. Myself and Paul hope to invite a range of artists to the site to become artists in residence. Its hoped that the first artists to spend time in the space are Alex Lockett and Ian England who will be spending 12 months down at the garden from January 2009. As well as Alex and Ian there will be further residencies taking place from May 2009. As well as these residencies we hope to have a range of smaller projects taking place.

The second part of The Rea Garden is the ‘dome’ area. Leon is building a geodesic dome within the currently uncleared area. The dome will be an area for the research into 360 degree film as well as many other things….

We will be having a celebratory bbq this Sunday after such a good show, so those of you who didn’t make it can get to see it. And anyone else can see it again…

Sun Sounds and Sausages are the order of the day… It’s on from 4pm; we will supply food and drink, but encourage you to bring a bottle.

Custard Factory Garden Shipping Container Delivery from leolodreamland on Vimeo.

from pete ashton’s blog

I only had a few minutes to hang there but I liked what I saw and shot some TTV.

It was over 9 months ago since we approached The Custard Factory with our proposal for a shipping container project. We were given access to the ‘triangle space’ at the north of the factory site which was in a state of disrepair and in need of clearing. At first we could only see the space from the fourth floor of The Custard Factory due to the high wall around the space and no gate. It was obvious there was a large amount of ‘weeds’ within the space, due to this overgrowth the project changed from the initial ideas we had into The Secret Garden. For 6 months we worked in the space creating works in response to the site, a burned down factory which had been left for over twenty years. In March we began clearing one of the three spaces in the site of Budlea in preparation for the arrival of the shipping containers which are now in place and contain some of the artworks produced over the time we have spent there.

As the show is opening to the public on Thursday I feel we are reaching a new phase in the development of the site, the space which was unused now has huge potential.

Chopping down the Budlea with friends and family. Timelapse video over two days, 5 seconds every 5 minutes, then speeded up…