Feral Arcadia, The Big Art Project
Client The Big Art Trust / Newham Borough Council
Budget £70.000.00
muf were commissioned by the Big Art Project to make a proposal for the publicly nominated site of the Beckton Alp. The project was part of the television series produced by Channel Four with the Arts Council to explore the social, political and aesthetic relevance of 21st Century public art.
Beckton Alp is the highest man-made hill in the southeast of England and is the chemical waste from the now defunct Beckton Gas Works, once the largest chemical plant in Europe. The site is a local landmark and is a semi derelict ruin of the abandoned workings of an artificial ski slope development.
muf proposed the Alp itself is the icon and requires not an artwork but the political support and will to renovate the site to fully realize its potential as a unique amenity and historic landscape. The strategy for renovation was established in dialogue with the Plant Sciences Department at Imperial College and is proposed as an accessible phytoremediation research garden to demonstrate the capacity for the micro-processes of plants to clean the soil of toxins.
To raise the profile of the site and the strategy for remediation, muf instigated a dialogue with the key Alp stakeholders of councilors, officers, the developer and users of the site. The dialogue was structured around an exhibition of the Alp Natural and Cultural History Collection. The collection is the findings from the three-month research residency in a portacabin at the base of the alp to document use and evidence of use of the alp as a place of adventure and repose and its potential as a social amenity.
