Hey for Lubberland!

 

Ikon, Birmingham, 2009

 

We were invited by Ikon to make an off-site project for Birmingham's famous canals and British Waterways provided us with a work boat to use for the project. We adapted a version of a Buckminster Fuller 'plydome' to form an architectural canopy on the boat, which we painted with our own take on so-called ‘Dazzle camouflage’, a type of graphic patterning devised by artists in World War One for navy ships as a means of confusing enemy combatants. The project’s title was taken from a 16th Century nonsense ballad about a fictional Utopian world that is in fact a Fool’s Paradise, and the public were invited to take trips on the boat and contemplate their own notions of escape and Utopia.


 

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