Very English Tourism Spots are Just Intensely Managed Distractions
Riffing on nostalgia and the picturesque, Simon Roberts’ photos of a nation at leisure are a warning against the idealisation and politicisation of land
The queen, Wimbledon, Queen, red buses, red post-boxes, red trousers, fish and chips, pints of mild, pints of bitter, flat caps, mining, Brian May, miners, snooker, Cornish Pasties, horse-racing, Bingo and cricket. These are just some of the cliches-that-are-actual-things that distinguish the English. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list.
One wonders how long it will take for the list of cliches to grow to include more than social, sporting, entertainment and food items not rooted in the experience of the British Empire. After all, immigrants have been establishing vital communities in England and other countries in the United Kingdom steadily since WWII. The 2011 UK census reported that 7.5 million people in Britain were foreign-born, almost 12% of the population. (Britain is not England, but we can presume the stats are about the same acrossit and Northern Ireland). In the 10 years prior, inward-migration accounted for 70% of the population increase in the UK.
Why is this important? In the context of Simon Roberts’ oeuvre, it is vital. Roberts is not a pie-eyed flag-hugger. He is not a nostalgic Englishman — at least not in the way that many Englishmen and women can be to the point of jingoism. Roberts’ pastoral scenes of the English and Englishness are not a sentimental rally cry for England for England’s sake. But they may be mistaken for that. We should avoid such a dangerous assumption.
The majority of the change in England over the past 70 years or so has gone on in towns and cities. New communities have populated poorer urban areas, rejuvenated them (and in some case been latterly pushed out by gentrification). New development has been on brown-field sites and on the outskirts of existing built-up areas to provide supermarkets, entertainment centers and tightly packed housing estates.
Town parks, protected sites, monuments, Roman and medieval ruins and other historic places have been either protected from encroachment of modern development, or were simply located too far away in the first place for it to matter. Roberts’ photographs are the response — of a curious human with a clever eye — to the stranger, quieter and less common behaviours of people at leisure at these long-existing sites.
Roberts’ new series National Property: The Picturesque Imperfect focuses upon the heritage industry in England. It does not depict many urban areas and, as such, we don’t see the less picturesque parts of England — the declining farming towns, the binge drinking health crisis, the faces of the imprisoned, or homeless youth in Sheffield, or just the quiet youth.
Neither do we see (except for a single image of a non-white family) the diverse customs and ethnicities of contemporary England that (tend to) thrive in the cities — we don’t see multi-faith concentrations in Birmingham, Roma in Greater Manchester, the sights and smells of an East London street market, and the list goes on.
Of course, the ironically titled, National Property: The Picturesque Imperfect is as much a reflection on what is absent from Roberts’ frame as that which falls within. Consciously, it isolates moments to reveal the bigger picture, metaphorically and literally. People in Roberts’ works appear as small as ants and it is made obvious that they are treading the same paths as hundreds of thousands before them. England’s landscape is so intensely managed that we are left to wonder exactly when, or if, the guided tour ends and our ordinary lives pick up. We are left in no doubt as to how much leisure activities are manufactured.
Indeed, National Property continues an overtly constructed view of England that Roberts perfected in the mostly fond, but slightly patronising views, of mass recreation in We English (2009); his meditation on the English seaside and pier in Pierdom (2013); and the brilliantly elevated large-format tableaux of staged electioneering and protest in Election Project (2010). Often, Roberts makes works from atop his motorhome, a vantage-point that allows him to witness events “governed by forces that are not possible to see from a position within the crowd” he argues.
The Flowers Gallery, where the series is currently on show says that National Property explores “exploring themes of identity, memory and nationhood through our everyday interactions with the landscape.” Fair enough. They also say that it “invites wider questions about private ownership and public usage of land.” I’m not so sure about that, but I might be under-thinking it.
I was happy to learn — courtesy of Stephen Daniels, Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Nottingham in the exhibition blurb — that the National Trust along with English Heritage, the Ministry of Defence, Utility companies, and the Forestry Commission are among the largest UK landowners.
England is cosily pieced together and the interest of many groups routinely overlap in places. Ever since Victorians were given 5 days off each summer from their 16 hour work days, there’s been a rightful entitlement among the English to its unpopulated, green areas. Infrequent fair weather makes enjoyment of such spaces a larger premium. We cannot assume that these sites are in any way England by proxy, nor that these sites are in any way purely for holidaying and leisure.
These landscapes in private/quasi-public hands are juggling multiple uses — hiking, agriculture, seasonal tourism, habitat protection, architectural preservation, forestry. Activities are staged and calendared.
“All of that frames shared experiences of place, a sense of cultural belonging,” says Daniels, “and the various ways this is claimed in the ways people conduct themselves, and in the company they keep.”
At their simplest, Simon Roberts’ photographs are beautiful things. You must venture past the visual hook and so long as we refuse the nostalgic references he plays with we’ll be alright. We should recognise that the predominant white faces (at least in the images I’ve seen) don’t represent the diversity of England; and we must acknowledge that all nature in England is highly manicured and administered; and we can appreciate that Roberts’ is needling English quirks and not blindly celebrating them.
These scenes are staged in multiple ways. In my mind, they rest at one end of an Artificial → Real spectrum. Roberts’ photographs have me wondering what’s happening elsewhere in England and elsewhere in English people’s daily lives beyond the public performance of leisure. He’s got me wondering about cities; he’s got me wondering about hardships, labour — the things that seem more “real” because they are everyday and mundane.
Roberts and National Property has me wondering about imperfections beyond those bearable blemishes of the picturesque.
National Property: The Picturesque Imperfect is on show at Flowers Gallery, London, July 8th — August 8th.
Based in Brighton, UK, Simon Roberts is an internationally exhibited artist. In 2010, Roberts was commissioned as the official Election Artist by the House of Commons Works of Art Committee on behalf of the UK Parliament. His work is the collections of George Eastman House; Deutsche Börse Art Collection; and Wilson Centre for Photography. He has published three books, Motherland (Chris Boot, 2007); We English (Chris Boot, 2009); and Pierdom (Dewi Lewis, 2013).
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