PRESS RELEASE : 7 June 2002
'M6 Toll' : Photographs of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road by John Hodgett
7 September - 3 November 2002
Public Space Galleries: mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham, B12 9QH.
Open daily 9am - 11pm. Admission Free
In the past I have worked in the documentary genre, but for the last 5 years my interest has been more towards conceptually based work. The Birmingham Northern Relief Road project started almost by accident in June 2001.
I was out looking for locations to test ideas for my research degree when I came across the Birmingham Northern Relief Road site. Although the BNRR is being constructed less than three miles from where I live, I had viewed it only from an environmental perspective - the sheer scale of the operation and the related statistics are massive - and not as a photographic issue.
Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of earth are being moved over its 27 mile length, more than a million trees are being planted to minimise the impact on the immediate surroundings, hundreds of safe havens for flora and fauna are being built, as are numerous tunnels ways for the wild life to pass under the road between habitats. Not surprisingly, the building of the road has created much controversy, and attracted a lot of attention from environmental groups, local residents, politicians and farmers.
Building road systems, like many other forms of land development, is considered as a sign of "civilisation" - conspicuous evidence of how we can control the environment and make it conform to the apparent needs of a modern consumer based society. The BNRR is geographically redefining the area to the North of Birmingham, and when completed will be first new toll road in the UK.
I decided to record the building of the road, and some of the visual peculiarities and disparities presented by such an enormous construction project. It is not my intention to comment directly on the merits and/or ethics of building road systems, or to respond in a political way to the impact the BNRR has had on the environment.
My aim is to show what is happening from a dispassionate (but not disinterested) perspective; to record and reveal the visual incongruity of some of the elements that make up the 27 mile site, be that the appearance of a solitary portaloo in the middle of acres of freshly skimmed land, or the bizarre placing of a painted pole which illustrates so eloquently the "before and after" effect of the construction.'
John Hodgett
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For further info please contact:
John Godbold on 0121 440 4221 ext 218
Email : john.godbold@mac-birmingham.org.uk o
Venue Details: mac (Midlands Arts Centre), Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B12 9QH.
Information/ Box Office: 0121 440 3838
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